UK Govt under fire as toll soars

Critics say lack of testing typical of sluggish response

The death toll in the UK has soared again, with 563 deaths and 4324 new cases recorded in one day. The dramatic spike sees the number of total deaths reach 2352 with almost 30,000 known to be infected, as debate rages on the country’s testing programme.

The pandemic has also seen the cancellation of some of the UK’s most iconic events — none more so than the Wimbledon tennis championships, called off for the first time since World War II.

The huge leap in fatalities is 48 per cent higher than the previous day’s total of 381 and makes the UK now the fifth worst-affected nation in Europe. The true total of infection can’t be known, with Britain’s restrictive testing programme being blamed for the paucity of information.

Richard Horton, editor of medical journal The Lancet, said Britain’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis was “the most serious science policy failure in a generation”.

“Now [testing is] a priority,” Horton said. “Public message: utter confusion.”

The UK has restricted testing to hospitalised patients, leaving people with milder symptoms unsure whether they have had the virus. Many scientists say wider testing would allow medics who are off work with symptoms to return if they are negative, and would give a better picture of how the virus spreads.

The UK initially performed about 5000 tests a day, but the Government promised to increase that to 10,000 by the end of last week and to 25,000 by mid-April. Yesterday, the Government said 9793 tests had been performed in 24 hours, the highest daily total yet.

Critics contrast the UK with Germany, which reacted quickly as reports of the new respiratory virus emerged from China at the end of last year. It began producing a test for Covid-19 in January, weeks before the UK. Germany now has the capacity to do 500,000 tests a week.

The Government says testing front-line healthcare workers is a priority, but only 2000 have been tested so far, from a National Health Service workforce of more than 1 million.

British officials blame shortages of swabs to take samples and of chemicals known as reagents for the delays.

The United States has also struggled to boost its testing capacity. A test produced by the Centres for Disease Control suffered early reliability problems and there were delays in engaging the private sector to ramp up testing capacity. US testing is now growing rapidly, but varies widely from state to state.

Public health experts have estimated the US should be testing between 100,000 and 150,000 patients daily to track and contain the virus. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the US is testing “nearly 100,000 samples per day” and had now tested more than 1 million samples for the coronavirus. It wasn’t clear if that figure represented patients or samples processed.

Critics of the British Government say the testing debacle is typical of its sluggish and complacent response to the pandemic. The UK was slower than many European countries to implement measures such as closing schools, bars and restaurants and telling people to stay home. A nationwide lockdown was imposed just over a week ago.

After a decade of public spending cuts by Conservative governments, the National Health Service and other public health bodies have very little spare capacity.

Jonathan Ashworth, health spokesman for the Labour Party, said health workers “are rightly asking if we’ve left it too late to buy the kits and chemicals we need, or whether our lab capacity is too overstretched after years of tight budgets”.