3: THE LABS 4: BLAME

THE Government outsourced the processing of some test results to private companies.

These include the firm Deloitte, which operates the “Lighthouse Labs”.

Last week, Sarah-Jane Marsh, director of testing at NHS Test and Trace, suggested a backlog at private labs was behind problems, describing them as “a critical pinch-point”.

NHS England appealed in August for in-house NHS labs to help due to a surge in capacity at private labs. But it is hard to know if the outsourced firms are

INFO ISSUES responsible for the backlog Lighthouse lab due to lack of transparency.

Prof Alan McNally of Birmingham University, who helped set up the first Lighthouse lab in Milton Keynes, said: “It is the most closely guarded secret in the UK.

“I wish there would have been some clarity and honesty. If this was Public Heath England or the NHS running this system, there would be full transparency and public disclosure of what the issues were.”

IT was reported earlier this week that ministers were planning to tighten up on claims made for “frivolous” reasons.

In an apparent U-turn just weeks after urging people to get checked if they have symptoms for Covid-19 or “have any doubt”, Heath Secretary Matt Hancock last week claimed that a quarter of those coming forward for checks were ineligible because they were asymptomatic.

Yet the Mirror has analysed Government test data to reveal that the proportion of coronavirus tests which give a positive result has gone up more than four-fold in two months.

On September 10, 3,425 out of 227,465 tests were found to be positive, or 1.5%. On August 10, it was 1,474 out of 116,207, or 0.9%

And on July 10 it was 566 out of 161,796, or just 0.3%.

The rate of coronavirus cases is higher now than it was in June.

U-TURN Matt Hancock