Johnson under fire over virus
PM announces ‘massive increase in testing’ amid growing criticism
London: Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain would “massively increase testing” amid a growing wave of criticism about his government’s failure to provide widespread coronavirus screening.
In a video message posted online on Wednesday from Downing Street, where he has been in self-isolation since March 27, Johnson said testing was the “way through”.
“We’re also massively increasing testing. As I have said for weeks and weeks this (testing) is the way through,” Johnson said.
He was reacting to condemnation of his government, especially in the media, after officials revealed that just 2,000 out of half-a-million staff in the state-run National Health Service (NHS) had been tested.
There have also been reports of staff members being turned away from drive-in test centres because they did not have the correct paperwork, or others which were deserted because testing was by appointment only.
Figures published on Wednesday showed a total of 2,352 people with Covid-19 have died in the UK, an increase of 563, the largest single-day rise. Two of the deaths were medics.
Testing for the general public has also been condemned as not being widespread enough.
On Tuesday, 10,000 hospital patients and NHS staff members were tested in England, well below the daily target of 25,000 and the 70,000 a day achieved in Germany.
Various normally pro-government newspapers condemned the plans as a “scandal” and a “shambles” as the backlash gathered pace.
Paul Nurse, chief executive of biomedical research centre the Francis Crick Institute, told the BBC yesterday that the government should summon “the Dunkirk spirit” and let ‘small ship’ labs start screening for the killer disease.
So far, Public Health England, the body tasked with testing, has insisted all screening should be carried out centrally.