Coronavirus testing should have scaled up more quickly, Chief Scientist admits

Testing for coronavirus did not ramp up as quickly as it should have, the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor has admitted.

Sir Patrick Vallance told ITV News Public Health England had made a “good start” when they started testing at borders and airports in the early days of the pandemic.

But he said the vital testing had “not scaled as fast as it needs to scale”.

He said: “I think the testing at the beginning was at the right level. I think 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 into 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 done rapidly enough to look at outbreaks and isolate.”

(ITV)

Yesterday, Number 10 claimed the UK was still on course to hit its target of 100,000 tests a day before the end of the month.

But just 18,000 were tested in the 24 hours to Sunday morning.

And 14,506 tests on 10,745 people were carried out on Sunday, excluding data from Northern Ireland.

Mr Vallance added: “I think it's been good in terms of what's been able to be done in hospitals.

“It clearly hasn't been at the scale that's enabled all the healthcare workers testing, that's an important part of this.

“I think that's why it's so important that it does get into the right position now.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey today admitted there were “gaps” in the UK’s capacity to deliver on the 100,000-a-day target.

Ms Coffey said the Government was "well prepared" for the outbreak.

"What I've said is I think that we have been well prepared, and when there have been deficiencies we've sought to address them, we've made some changes," she said.

"And we recognise that there are still some gaps in aspects like our capacity to test 100,000 people, which is the target set by the Health Secretary, but we're working with the NHS, but also the private sector, to make sure we can meet that capacity."