CORONAVIRUS Leaked figures reveal scale of coronavirus test shortage A huge backlog has forced Brita15 Sep 2020 07:47
CORONAVIRUS
Leaked figures reveal scale of coronavirus test shortage
A huge backlog has forced Britain to send swabs abroad, casting doubt on its capacity to test as many people as it claimed. The government’s “world-beating” testing programme has a backlog of 185,000 swabs and is so overstretched that it is sending tests to laboratories in Italy and Germany, according to leaked documents.
A Department of Health and Social Care report marked “Official: sensitive” also confirms that most British laboratories are clearing fewer tests than their stated capacity, as they are hit by “chaos” in supply chains. The government claims that it has capacity for 375,000 tests a day. However, the actual number of people being tested for the coronavirus stalled to just 437,000 people a week at the start of the month — equivalent to just 62,000 a day. Throughout last week, people in Covid-19 hotspots across the north of England struggled to get tests and were told to travel hundreds of miles for an appointment. In Bolton, which has the highest infection rate in Britain of more than 180 weekly cases per 100,000 people, no tests were available on the government’s online booking system between Thursday and Saturday.
One man in London with symptoms of the disease yesterday claimed that he had tried to book a test 60 times but found none available. Earlier in the week people in the capital had been told that the nearest site was in Aberdeen, an 18-hour round trip. He has also commissioned Operation Moonshot, an ambitious plan to introduce up to 10 million daily tests by the spring, at a cost of up ÂŁ100bn.
Sign In
Follow the stocks
