Now huge Scots test lab faces delay as officials fail to secure a building
A HUGE Covid testing lab due to open in Scotland could be delayed for months because officials have yet to secure a building for it.
The ‘mega-lab’, with capacity to conduct about 300,000 tests a day, was announced in November along with another centre in England.
However, while the lab in Leamington Spa, West Midlands, is opening as planned, the recruitment of 1,800 staff in Scotland has been put on hold after issues held up work on the hub.
When the labs were announced, the UK Government said they would transform the UK’s diagnostic capabilities, more than doubling capacity, with UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock saying they would save lives.
The labs will also be used for critical illness tests including for cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Both were due to open in ‘early 2021’, according to the UK Government. Scotland’s Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said in November she was working closely with Mr Hancock to deliver the lab in Scotland, which would be ‘an important step in our fight against the virus’.
Experts have repeatedly called for testing capacity to be ramped up so that entire towns and cities can be screened in order to find and isolate asymptomatic carriers of the disease.
However, critics have accused the Scottish Government of being slow to roll out the strategy despite First Minister Nicola Sturgeon saying ‘community testing can play a part in controlling the virus’. The location of the lab in Scotland has yet to be announced but a message sent last week from the UK Government’s Department of Health and Social Care to applicants for lab jobs revealed delays.
It said: ‘Unfortunately, there has been a necessary pause in recruitment as they are securing a building and dealing with the transition of an existing tenant and signing of a lease and these have taken considerably longer than originally envisaged.’
Scientist Allan Wilson, who is president of the Institute of Biomedical Science, an industry body for UK lab workers, said: ‘If they are not even at the stage of having the building yet, I would think that would set them back months rather than weeks.
‘However, I’m not surprised it has been delayed because it had all gone quiet. And, as usual, this government lab is shrouded in secrecy.
‘We don’t even know where the lab is going to be. I’ve heard it’s going to be Bellshill but that is just a rumour.’
Mr Wilson also criticised the Scottish Government for delays to the opening of three regional coronavirus labs in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
They were due to open by last October, before the deadline was moved to the end of 2020. Two have opened to support the mass weekly testing of asymptomatic care home workers but a third, in Edinburgh, has not.
The Scottish Government said yesterday that the Edinburgh regional lab would open ‘later this month’ but declined to comment on the mega-lab, saying that it was a matter for the UK Government.
When the Scottish lab was announced, the head of Scottish Government quango Scottish Enterprise, Linda Hanna, said she was ‘pleased to have played a part in bringing this mega-lab to Scotland’.
But yesterday Scottish Enterprise said: ‘Other than early suggestions of possible locations, we’ve not had a direct hand in the project but stand ready to facilitate/help when details become clearer.’
‘This is shrouded in secrecy’