UK’S COVID TESTING SCANDAL EXPOSED

REVEALED: How experts’ offers of Covid tests to NHS and ministers were met by deafening silence... with dire consequences for our health – and economy

THE coronavirus testing shambles is laid bare today with claims that the Government ignored offers of super-fast machines six months ago.

The while-you-wait gadgets could have been installed in care homes, schools, hospitals and businesses to quickly scan people for the virus and spare the British economy.

Instead, the Government launched a cumbersome £12billion system with patients forced to wait days or travel hundreds of miles – allowing the virus to spread and leading to draconian rules.

A Daily Mail investigation found a litany of failures and shortcomings in Britain’s supposedly ‘ world-beating’ testing system. This newspaper’s audit found:

Firms offered on-the-spot test devices when the crisis began in March – but were ignored by Government officials.

Experts said millions of Britons a day could be getting tested by now instead of a paltry 250,000.

A world-renowned epidemiologist lambasted the Government for ‘completely cocking up’ Covid testing.

A vast ‘white elephant’ testing lab that was supposed to open in August has yet to process a single test.

One diagnostics company told the Mail it put forward its life-saving system in March, but none of its emails were replied to.

Another said the country could be testing two million people a day by now – instead of the present shambolic system that was overwhelmed in the first week of the school term.

The Government has been setting up a centralised network of megalabs to conduct coronavirus testing. The ‘Lighthouse Labs’ have been taking up to a week to process results, causing havoc with entire schools having to close and care homes being forced to isolate staff who displayed symptoms but may actually have been Covid- free. One senior NHS source said: ‘We had almost 100,000 schoolkids tested last week and endless requests from teachers. The system was utterly overwhelmed, even though it was not exactly a secret that the school holidays were finishing.’

However, several manufacturers of rapid lab- free testing machines which can give the allclear within minutes claim they have been ignored.

Paul Tolan, the UK boss of Menarini Diagnostics, said other countries in Europe have snapped up thousands of his firm’s devices, including to protect the German army, navy and air forces. But when Mr Tolan wrote to officials at the Cabinet Office about the Menarini system in March, to his surprise he never received a response.

The Menarini VitaPCR system costs £5,000 and is about the size of a dictionary. It can process one test costing £60 every 20 minutes and can be installed anywhere and operated by anyone.

There are already 110 of the Menarini machines currently in use across the UK – including in some NHS hospitals which use private testing services – with orders for another 70 being processed. At Yeovil District Hospital in Somerset it is used to test urgent admissions, in a service run by a private firm, Synlab, with a public-private partnership called Southwest Pathology Services whose general manager Lynda Fazer said the kit had ‘lived up to its claims’.

Mr Tolan said: ‘We could have had thousands of systems in place all over the country by now.’ He said other governments had since placed so many orders that even if British officials had a change of heart it would be difficult to get them.

In April, Mr Tolan tried again, this time with Public Health England. It was not until late July that a PHE representative got in contact, and earlier this month a trial of the machine began. It is being assessed in Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey and Royal Berkshire Hospital.

It has been ‘a very slow process’, said Mr Tolan, adding he had ‘ no doubt’ the testing systems would have saved lives.

He claims that the trial is yet to ‘start properly’.

Another fast- track testing machine, called Gmate, takes around 20 minutes. Businessman

Des Campbell said he told the Government back in May that within six weeks, he could get enough of the shoebox-sized machines to test more than two million Britons a day.

Mr Campbell set up a company, Covid 19 Alliance Ltd, to import the Gmate unit from south Korea.

He said: ‘You can carry it anywhere, and you don’t need any specialist knowledge to use it. You can do about four tests an hour – perfect for a care home that wants to test visitors on their way in.’ He said the machines cost £2,700 and then each test was £31.

these are among several rapid testing systems on the international market, but in many cases there is a trade-off between the accuracy of the test result and how swiftly it can be delivered.

the British Government has decided to prioritise accuracy over speed, with its Lighthouse Labs offering a high degree of clinical certainty – but taking days to deliver it.

the Government has also been pursuing rapid-result devices, and has placed an initial order worth £ 161million for 5,000 machines called Covid-Nudge to supply 5.8million while-you-wait tests.

Designed by Imperial College London spinout company DnaNudge, it can offer results in 90 minutes with a high degree of accuracy. However it has been in the ‘assessment’ phase since April and has not yet been rolled out.

In Italy, Germany and France, similar systems have been in place for weeks.

A pregnancy-style test kit made by south Korean firm sD Biosensor is used to scan travellers at Rome’s Fiumicino airport.

Dr Ali Joy, who practices privately in Chelsea, has been using the tests on patients for six weeks. she hailed it as ‘amazing’ and said it should be rolled out more widely.

A Department of Health and social Care spokesman said the NHs test and trace system is ‘ providing tests at an unprecedented scale, and more than one in ten people in England have now been tested for coronavirus’.

the Government is piloting two new types of rapid tests that will process results within 90 minutes.

the spokesman added: ‘ We continue to automate parts of the process, install new machines, hire more permanent staff, open new labs and invest further in new technology to process results faster as we increase capacity towards 500,000 tests per day by the end of October.’