Artificial intelligence will be used by the National Health Service to detect, screen and treat people at risk of the disease.
Thousands of people are living with the silent killer because they don't know they have the infectious disease.
It can cause life threatening damage to the liver if left unaddressed. Modern treatments are able to cure the infections.
In a new drive to identify thousands of people who are unaware they have the disease, health chiefs are launching a hi-tech screening programme.
The aim of the scheme is to help people living with the disease get a life-saving diagnosis and access to treatment before it's too late.
The National Health Service will use artificial intelligence to identify people who may have the disease by looking at their health records.
Anyone identified through the new screening process will be invited for a review by their GP and will be offered treatment if they test positive for the disease.
The schememarks a significant step forward in the fight to eliminate the virus before the year 2030. He said it would use new software to identify and test patients most at risk from the virus.
We will continue to boost the life chances of thousands of patients by catching the virus even earlier because hepatitis C can be a fatal disease which affects tens of thousands across the country.
The number of deaths from the disease has fallen by over a third. There were 482 deaths from the virus in England in 2015, but there were 314 deaths in 2020. The number of new cases has fallen from 129,000 in 2015 to 81,000 in 2020.
Blood-to-blood contact is one of the ways in which the disease is spread. It can be spread by sharing needles that are not sterile.
Pamela Anderson contracted the disease while married to Tommy Lee, who had a history of drug use. The cured Anderson was 55 years old.
The recent fall in deaths is due to earlier detection of the virus and improved access to treatments, according to experts.
"Thanks to the brilliant advances we have seen in hepatitis C treatment in recent years, we have a chance to eliminate the virus as a public health concern in the next few years." In order to do so, we need to find people with an undetected infection and refer them to treatment.
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The announcement of the new screening programme is good news. Those who have been living with an undetected infection are most likely to go to primary care.
In recent years there has been great work to expand testing in a wide range of settings, but we haven't seen the changes we need in primary care. Another important step towards elimination is the roll out of this screening programme.
The National Health Service is visiting at-risk communities in specially equipped trucks to test for the virus and carry out health checks.
The goal of the World Health Organization is to eradicate the disease from the world before the year 2030.
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