Hancock faces testing time on Covid target
WHEN the Health Secretary solemnly promised 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the month’s end, the Mail applauded his vaulting ambition.
An exhaustive screening programme was the only way to resolve this appalling crisis – saving lives, averting a cataclysmic recession and ending the gruelling lockdown. But we gently warned Matt Hancock: ‘Don’t fail this test, minister.’
Today, not even the most Tigger-ish optimist believes he will hit the audacious target. With just eight days until the deadline, shamefully only a fraction of the pledged tests are being carried out.
Yes, the Government is finally doubling the number of drive-through centres to swab NHS and care staff (and – at last! – other key employees). But disturbingly, these facilities stand empty because they are located too far from people’s homes.
Did no lavishly remunerated administrator think of sending mobile units to easily accessible hospitals or clinics instead?
Proposals to roll out self-test Covid kits to care homes are similarly frustrated by red tape. Box-tickers at Public Health England and other agencies refuse to give the green light until staff are ‘accredited’ – by which time it will be too late.
Remember, the Left-wing doctrinaires at this corpulent quango also rebuffed offers of help from private labs to help grapple the disease.
The testing fiasco is mirrored in the protective equipment scandal. As of last night an RAF jet is still waiting on a Turkish runway to fly back a consignment of gowns and masks. Yet ministers promised the lifesaving kit would be here last Sunday.
Instead of solely focusing on fixing the shambles, an unedifying blame game has broken out in Whitehall – with Mr Hancock in the cross hairs. Politicians really should not forget the public is appalled by such in-fighting.
Up and down the land, people are acutely aware that lives and our economy are at stake. They want ministers to grab the crisis by the scruff of the neck – not plot how to avoid the stain of culpability.