Ministers were accused today of fuelling public “mistrust” in the middle of the battle against Covid-19 by publishing inadequate figures on coronavirus tests.
In a bombshell intervention, Britain’s statistics watchdog accused the Government of putting out figures which “fall well short” of expectations.
The criticism came as the official death toll from coronavirus in the UK rose towards 50,000.
The shocking figure put Britain among the countries hardest hit by the killer virus and comes amid growing questions over the Government’s handling of the epidemic.
The Government has been accused of ordering lockdown too late, blunders in providing personal protective equipment to NHS staff and care workers, failing to do enough to protect care homes and being too slow to ramp up testing — all claims it denies.
Ministers have set a series of targets for increasing testing — to 100,000 and now 200,000 — which they say have been met.
They have succeeded in hugely expanding Britain’s testing capability and setting up a new test-and-trace system at pace.
But in a letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Sir David Norgrove, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, was highly critical of the figures being issued by the Government at the No 10 daily press conference to justify that targets are being met.
And the latest figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, also published last week, showed 716 deaths involving Covid-19 had been registered in Northern Ireland up to May 27.
A further 819 deaths occurred in hospitals in England since May 23, according to figures from NHS England, taking the total to just over 49,700.
The figures also revealed the shocking death toll in care homes, with 12,142 Covid-linked deaths in such settings in England by this date and 591 in Wales.
The full impact of Covid-19 is widely believed to be even higher, with the number of “excess deaths” since the start of the epidemic now 56,308, compared to the average over the previous five years.
Just under two thirds of the Covid-linked deaths in England and Wales happened in hospitals.
