By Tony O’Riley-
The Health Secretary say the British government has reached its target of 100,000 tests a day after it provided more than 122,000 coronavirus tests on the last day of April, exceeding the government’s target, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
Hancock praised private sector partners for the acceleration in testing capability which has seen mobile testing units and new labs created
“Setting stretching, ambitious goals in a national crisis has a galvanising effect on everyone involved,” he said. “I knew that it was an audacious goal but we needed an audacious goal,” he said. “I can announce that we have met our goal.”
The figure has faced some criticism because it includes home test kits counted when they were dispatched, and includes 2797 kits which were delivered to people’s homes and also 12,872 tests that were sent out to centres such as hospitals and NHS sites. If hospital and Nhs sites claim to have conducted the testing, they should be believed. Those who know how to follow the simple testing instructions should also be expected to do so, but verification may be neccessary.
Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth suggested the government had been misleading by counting tests that had been mailed out to people, rather than completed.
“Tonight’s headline figure shouldn’t count tests that hadn’t been used, or indeed, might never be used as a completed test,” he said. Prof John Newton who advises the government on testing said there had been “no change to the way tests are counted”.
“As we’ve developed new ways of delivering tests, we’ve taken advice from officials as to how they should be counted,” he said.
“So, the tests that are done within the control of the programme – which is the great majority – are counted when the tests are undertaken in our laboratories.
“But, for any test which goes outside the control of the programme, they’re counted when they leave the programme – so that’s the tests that are mailed out to people at home and the test that’s gone out on the satellite.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference on Friday, Mr Hancock said the figures marked an “incredible achievement”, and added that it would serve as help to “unlock” the lockdown.
With this next mission of test, track and trace, I’m seeking a solution that allows us, by each of us participating, to target the measures that are needed with much more precision and so to reassert, as much as is safely possible, the liberty of us all,” Mr Hancock said.
“That is our next mission. But for now the most important thing for everyone to do to keep R [rate of transmission] down and to get us all through is to retain the spirit and resolve that has had such an impact thus far.”