Chessington World of Adventures has been turned into a drive-through coronavirus test centre for NHS workers.

The family theme park and zoo was forced to close last week because of the pandemic but has now joined a government effort to ramp up checks for Covid-19.

Testing for frontline workers began at the site on Friday, with nurses taking swabs from the nose and mouth through car windows at a series of cabins dotted around the car park.

“We are proud to be able to offer our assistance to the NHS during this unprecedented time,” the theme park said in a statement.

It is one of a series of centres being opened with the support of pharmacy chain Boots, which has also set up another facility at its headquarters in Beeston, Nottingham.

They will initially be for NHS staff by invitation only. Boots pharmacy director Richard Bradley said the tests would be “completely free of charge so that they can return to work to support their colleagues on the front line”.

Last week Boris Johnson said testing would be increased to 25,000 a day but so far the figures are still well under 10,000 a day. More than 120,000 people in the UK had been tested for coronavirus by 9am on Saturday, up from 113,777 on Friday morning, and 1,019 patients with Covid-19 have died.

The theme park is one of many locations being temporarily repurposed for the fightback against coronavirus. London’s Excel Centre is being turned into NHS Nightingale, a field hospital for 4,000 patients, and work has started on a mortuary with space for 10,000 bodies at Birmingham Airport.

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Further temporary hospitals are being set up at Birmingham and Manchester and at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium. Over in Ireland, Croke Park stadium in Dublin – the home of Gaelic games – is being turned into a drive-through testing centre.

In Spain, where the death toll rose by 832 on Saturday to a total of 5,690, hotels have been converted into hospitals and the Palacio de Hielo mall in Madrid, home to an Olympic-sized ice rink, is being converted into a morgue.