Coronavirus testing still below daily target despite government claim milestone passed

Testing for coronavirus remains below the target of 10,000 a day, despite ministers’ claims over the weekend that the milestone had been passed.

Public Health England announced on Monday morning that the latest daily figure for antigen tests - which identify people currently infected - was 9,114, while health minister Helen Whately said that around 7,000 a day were carried out over the weekend.

Meanwhile, a Whitehall source said it was “premature” to suggest that 17.5 million antibody tests to identify people who have had the virus and recovered could soon get under way. Ministers have ordered millions of the blood tests, but checks are still ongoing to ensure that they work before they can be put to use.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth demanded to know why NHS staff are still not being routinely tested for coronavirus at a time when Germany is testing up to half a million people a week.

“Experts continue to call for the UK to significantly ramp up testing,” said Mr Ashworth. “When Germany is testing around 500,000 people a week, many are asking why we are still not even hitting the 10,000 a day promised on 11 March.

“We called for enforced social distancing, but it is a blunt tool without a national strategy to test and contact trace. At today’s Downing Street press conference we call on ministers to outline why testing is still not being scaled up at sufficient levels and what bottlenecks domestically and globally are hindering this.”

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NHS England said on 11 March that it was “significantly expanding” testing to 10,000 a day, and ministers later said that this would be reached by the end of last week, with a further target of 25,000 by the middle of April.

Cabinet minister Michael Gove told a TV interview on Sunday that “we’ve increased the number of tests to 10,000 a day, we’re going to move to get that up to 25,000 a day and we’re doing all that we can to increase and to accelerate that”. And health secretary Matt Hancock tweeted: “Good news that we’ve reached 10,000 #coronavirus tests a day – ahead of schedule. We’re on track to 25,000. #StayHomeSaveLives”

But in an interview on Monday, Ms Whately said that, while testing capacity had increased to 10,000 tests a day, only around 7,000 were carried out each day over the weekend.

And Public Health England said in a tweet: “NHS / PHE testing capacity for patient care stands at 10,949 a day. Latest figure for number of tests conducted is 9114. (Accurate as of 9am 28th March).”

Ms Whately told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Within the next three weeks we expect to get to 25,000 tests a day.

“The really important thing about that – the effort to test NHS and social care staff – is that we can prioritise the testing to parts of the health and care system where we have particular staff shortages so that we can help by testing people so that we can identify if they are negative so they would no longer need to isolate and they can go back to work.”

Grocery delivery company Ocado has ordered 100,000 Covid-19 testing kits for staff, to ensure that customers who cannot visit shops because they are observing lockdown can receive goods safely.

It is believed to have paid £1.5m for the testing kits, with 40,000 already delivered and a further 60,000 to come.

Labour former minister Gareth Thomas asked: “If Ocado can buy 100,000 Covid-19 test kits to ensure 'safety for all' for its staff, why can’t Michael Gove and Matt Hancock do the same for NHS staff? It beggars belief that staff are still not being routinely tested.”

The chair of the Commons Health Committee, Jeremy Hunt, has called for mass testing of the UK population, including weekly coronavirus tests for all NHS and care home staff.

“With mass testing, accompanied by rigorous tracing of every person a Covid-19 patient has been in touch with, you can break the chain of transmission,” said the former health secretary.

“Mass social distancing should protect the NHS through the peak over the next few weeks, but it's a blunt instrument with massive economic impact. For the next wave we must use the precision scalpel of mass testing.”