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Pharmacy chain, Boots, has announced that it will be offering a Covid testing service within weeks in some of its high street stores.

It will cost £120 and Boots says they will return results in only 12 minutes. However, the test is only for people who aren't showing symptoms.

The service will be rolled out in selected stores over the next few weeks.

It is just one of the ways people are trying to use testing to help people get back to something like normal life.

Last week, London's Heathrow airport became the first airport in the UK to offer passengers a rapid Covid test before checking in. The test will cost £80 and the result is guaranteed within an hour.

The aim is to help people travelling to destinations where proof of a negative result is required on arrival.

A growing number of countries have said the UK is "at risk", meaning travellers from the UK face more restrictions at their destination.

The type of test offered at Heathrow is different to the one used in the NHS because the sample does not need to be sent to a laboratory. Some destinations require that people travelling from the UK must prove they had a negative test after analysis in a laboratory - so the Heathrow test is not enough for passengers travelling to Italy for instance.

The authorities in Hong Kong now require people to show they have a negative test result, taken within 72 hours of a flight from London.

Tim Alderslade, who represents airlines in the UK, said he would like the cost of the test to be lower.

In September, Hong Kong began a free Covid-19 mass testing programme - which meant it would be available for everyone.

However, there has been criticism from healthcare workers that it is not an effective way to tackle the pandemic.

Activist have also said it could be misused for surveillance - which means collecting personal information about the population.

Authorities have dismissed the criticism and hope the universal testing effort will give an accurate picture of the spread and help to contain the pandemic.

Earlier this month, a team of scientists in India announced they had developed a cheap paper-based test for coronavirus, called Feluda, that could give fast results in under an hour and cost 500 rupees (about £5.25).

They found that the new test had 96% sensitivity - which means it will detect almost everyone who has the disease - and 98% specificity - which means it will almost always correctly rule out people who do not have the disease.

These two measures are how officials decide if a test is accurate enough.

Feluda could be the world's first paper-based Covid-19 test available in the market.

With the second highest number of cases in the world after the US, India is trying to increase testing, but there've been issues around the reliability of some types of test.

The most commonly used test around the world is a PCR test (used by the NHS). But they're the most expensive and take up to eight hours to process the samples. To produce a result may take up to a day, depending on the time taken to transport samples to labs.

In order to increase testing capacity, the Indian authorities have been switching over to a cheaper and quicker method called a rapid antigen test which can give a result in 15 to 20 minutes.

But these tests are less reliable, with an accuracy rate in some cases as low as 50%

The World Health Organization (WHO) has advised getting a PCR test if you test negative in a rapid antigen test.