CASES UP 75% IN ONE WEEK
...24-hour test results DOWN 50%
THE number of people testing positive for coronavirus in England has soared by 75 per cent – while those receiving results within the government’s 24hour target has halved.
In the week ending September 9, there were 18,371 new infections – the highest seven-day total since Test and Trace was launched in May. Yet the number of people getting nextday results fell from 66.5 per cent to 33.3 per cent – the lowest since June. Baroness Dido Harding, chief executive of the government’s much-criticised
‘world beating’ testing programme, admitted the system was not working well enough. But she insisted the surge in demand for tests had come as a surprise, claiming no-one could have predicted so many people would apply as children returned to school this month.
She said 27 per cent of people requesting a test had no symptoms.
And the Tory peer, who oversaw a huge data breach when in charge at tech firm TalkTalk, blamed testing problems on the government’s Sage advisory group and its ‘modelling’.
She told MPs on the science and technology committee: ‘I don’t think anybody was expecting to see the really sizeable increase we’ve seen.’
Britain’s official death toll rose by 21 to 41,705 yesterday, while another 3,395 new cases were recorded.
The north-east of England is to become the latest area to come under local lockdown restrictions.
A ‘lighthouse’ testing lab is to be opened in Newcastle, along with another one in Bracknell, Berkshire.
Health secretary Matt Hancock told MPs: ‘The battle against coronavirus is not over. And while we strain every sinew to spring free of its clutches, with winter on the horizon we must prepare, bolster our defences and come together once again against this common foe.’
Latest data shows that just 1.9 per cent of people in England using a home test kit received their result within 24 hours in the week to September 9, the lowest percentage so far.
And 9.3 per cent had to wait 48 hours – the lowest percentage since the week to June 10.
Baroness Harding repeated a promise made by Boris Johnson on Wednesday that Britain would be able to carry out 500,000 tests a day by the end of October. In the previous 24 hours, only 236,219 tests were processed, with many people unable to book appointments or told to travel hundreds of miles to a centre. NHS Providers said Britain remained ‘a long way off where we need to be with testing’. Deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery said trust leaders were ‘increasingly concerned’ that testing shortages could put pressure on services and winter preparations due to growing staff absences. ‘Trust leaders do not have the detail on why there are shortages, how widespread they are or how long they will last,’ she added. Greg Clark, Tory chairman of the science and technology committee, told Baroness Harding: ‘It is dispiriting to find we are in circumstances which were predictable and we have not had the right capacity put in place.’