"The lab will help rapidly increase the country’s capacity to test for coronavirus to tens of thousands of samples each day," the press release read.
The new lab in Cheshire's Alderley Park is the second facility after the first Lighthouse Lab was opened in the town of Milton Keynes last week. The opening of the third site in Glasgow is scheduled for next week, which would be completing the largest network of testing facilities in UK history.
"Our target to reach 100,000 coronavirus tests a day requires a national effort. ... Today is a milestone moment, as we applaud the staff at Alderley Park, the country’s second mega-lab," the innovation minister at the department of health and social care, Jim Bethell, was quoted as saying in the statement.
According to the government's COVID-19 bulletin, the number of virus-related deaths in the United Kingdom topped 16,000 over the weekend, with more than 120,000 people testing positive.
Only the US, France, Spain, and Italy have confirmed more COVID-19 deaths than the island nation.
On Thursday, the UK government extended lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease for another three weeks.
