Chief science adviser Patrick Vallance FINALLY admits that Britain failed to ramp up coronavirus testing numbers fast enough
- Sir Patrick Vallance has admitted testing numbers have not risen fast enough
- Chief science adviser said initial response was good but need to achieve scale
- Government facing mounting backlash over slow progress on mass screening
- Learn more about how to help people impacted by COVID
The government’s chief scientific adviser has finally admitted that the UK failed to ramp up coronavirus testing fast enough.
Sir Patrick Vallance conceded that while Public Health England got off to a ‘good start’ during the containment phase, checks had not ‘scaled up’ quickly since then.
The government has been facing a mounting backlash over the lack of mass testing.
The UK effectively abandoned efforts to screen everyone with symptoms last month when the response moved from ‘containment’ to the ‘delay’ phase.
Sir Patrick Vallance (pictured at the Downing Street briefing last night) conceded that while Public Health England got off to a ‘good start’ during the containment phase, checks had not ‘scaled up’ quickly since then
Military personnel carry out coronavirus tests on NHS staff at the centre at Chessington today
Instead tests were largely restricted to those in hospital, while those who suspected they were mildly infected were urged to self-isolate.
However, ministers have been stung by comparisons with countries like Germany and South Korea, which are doing huge scale testing and appear to have much lower death rates.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has launched a drive to get private laboratories to help conducting tests, amid complaints about shortages of swabs and chemicals.
He has pledged that the UK will be carrying out 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month, but there seems little prospect of the goal being achieved with numbers barely reaching 20,000.
In an interview on ITV News last night, Sir Patrick said: ‘I think the testing at the beginning was at the right level.
‘At the beginning, Public Health England got off to a good start in terms of testing to try and make sure they caught people coming in to the country with it.
‘I then think it’s not scaled as fast as it needs to scale — and that’s being done now.
‘But I do think testing is an incredibly important bit of this. It needs to be done at scale, and it needs to be able to be done rapidly enough to look at outbreaks and isolate.’
A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘The government has been very clear on the need to rapidly scale up our testing capacity and that is what we are doing.’
The spokesman said it was on course to meet the 100,000 daily target, with the new ‘mega-lab’ near Manchester now in operation – carrying out 500 tests – to join the Milton Keynes facility.
The Glasgow laboratory is due to begin work at the end of this week.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said a new lab, being set up by AstraZeneca, GSK and the University of Cambridge ‘aims to carry out 30,000 tests a day’.
Number 10 said that 505 social care workers were included in the testing programme over the weekend.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock (pictured at the weekend) has launched a drive to get private laboratories to help conducting tests, amid complaints about shortages of swabs and chemicals