25,000 virus checks a day... but NHS staff won’t get one

Row as medics in frontline of corona battle aren’t screened for deadly bug

TESTING for coronavirus is to be ramped up to 25,000 a day in a desperate bid to tackle the outbreak amid a row over the failure to test frontline NHS workers.

Ministers have come under severe criticism for imposing a restriction on March 12 which meant nobody has been able to get a test unless they are already severely ill in hospital.

Even frontline NHS workers have not been able to get tested – despite the country processing 5,000 tests a day. This is despite the World Health Organisation insisting that all countries must ‘test, test, test’.

Doctors and scientists say it is impossible to track and model the number of cases without confirming if people are infected.

The row has been further inflamed by the fact that private health clinics have been offering tests for as much as £375 a time to those wealthy enough to afford them.

Under pressure yesterday, Boris Johnson confirmed an escalation of testing capacity to 10,000-a-day by next week and 25,000-aday within four weeks.

He said testing of health workers would be a ‘priority’ but insiders admitted that would not happen until capacity has been significantly increased. Officials hope that routine testing of health service staff will become possible in the next few weeks but until then severely ill patients will take up all the country’s capacity.

In the meantime Mr Johnson is pinning his hopes that a ‘point of care’ test will emerge in the coming days. Government scientists are racing to develop such a test, which might be able to deliver a result in 30 minutes or less. On Tuesday night the Prime Minister held an emergency summit at Downing Street with major companies – including Roche, Boots and Amazon – in an appeal for assistance in developing a rapid test.

Officials believe it will be ‘weeks, rather than months’ before a test is ready to be rolled out.

Mr Johnson told MPs yesterday the first of these tests may even be able to tell whether someone has had the virus in the past and then recovered. That would enable people to return to work because they might then be immune.

He said: ‘It may be of interest to the House to know that we are getting much closer to having a generally available test which will determine whether or not you have had the disease and that will truly be of huge benefit to this country in tackling the outbreak.

‘We are prioritising NHS staff for the obvious reason that we want them to be able to look after everybody else with confidence that they are not transmitting the disease. This country is far ahead of many other comparable countries in testing large numbers of people.’ Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘We are already among the best in the world for coronavirus testing and today we are launching a national effort to increase our capability even further. Our aim is to protect life, protect the most vulnerable and relieve pressure on our NHS – so it is right that we prioritise testing for those most at risk of severe illness.’

He called on industry to help rapidly develop point-of-care testing.

At the moment tests are mainly done by swabbing cells from the back of the throat – where the virus replicates – and then sending it to an NHS lab, which takes up to 48 hours to deliver a result.

A rapid test which can deliver a result in 30 minutes would hugely expand the capacity.

A team from Oxford University engineering science department are at an advanced stage in the effort to develop such a test.

Professor Wei Huang, who is leading the work, said: ‘The beauty of this new test lies in the design of the viral detection that can specifically recognise Covid-19 RNA (ribonucleic acid) and RNA fragments. The test has built-in checks to prevent false positives or negatives and the results have been highly accurate.’

Scientists say the technology is very sensitive which means patients in early stages of infection may be identified sooner, potentially helping to reduce the spread.

But it has only been trialled so far on 16 clinic samples with far more testing needed. However, it is said to have a 100 per cent success rate in identifying the virus.

David Wrigley, of the British Medical Association, said: ‘The BMA has requested priority Covid-19 testing for doctors as a matter of urgency. With even those with minor symptoms having to selfisolate for at least a week, it is vital that health workers are prioritised for testing, so that any who test negative can, if they feel well enough, safely return to work.

‘Weeks before we get rapid test’