Hancock on course to miss his testing target

Britain unlikely to reach pledge of 100,000 a day without a dramatic increase in capacity

It is now just two weeks until the end of April – the deadline imposed by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, to reach 100,000 tests a day. But unless there is a drastic change in the UK’S testing capability, that target seems increasingly unlikely.

In early March, when Germany was commissioning a network of laboratories to hit 350,000 tests a week, the UK tested around 1,680 a day. In the six weeks since then, testing capacity has been ramped up. But not nearly enough.

By March 11, NHS England was pledging to increase capacity from 4,000 to 10,000 a day, but it was not until April 1 that this milestone was met, and for the past two weeks numbers have struggled to rise much higher, with a record on April 9, when just over 13,500 people were tested.

According to analysis by The Daily Telegraph, at the current rate of increase, Britain will be testing fewer than 20,000 people a day by the end of the month.

The Government insists the target of 100,000 refers to the number of tests conducted, not the number of people tested. However, the total of tests conducted will include failed tests, or multiple samples taken from the same person.

In a single day the largest number of tests performed was 19,116, also on April 9, meaning 30 per cent of all tests that day either failed or were needed to confirm a previous result.

With the caveat that Easter may have seen figures stall, the number of people tested has fallen in recent days. On Easter Monday 11,879 people were tested. On Tuesday it was 11,170.

‘The implications are stark. Only around one in every 200 people have been tested. In Norway it is one in 50’

Recent data is not yet bearing out the dramatic increase that has been promised. This is despite private laboratories insisting that repeatedly offers of help have fallen on deaf ears.

Good news appeared to be on the horizon when The Telegraph revealed last week that Thermo Fisher Scientific, the US firm, said it had the capacity to deliver all the tests needed to hit the target, having signed a major deal with the Government to ramp up tests at a laboratory in Milton Keynes.

Drive-by clinics were introduced, but have failed to push up numbers.

The implications are stark. Only around one in every 200 people have been tested. In Norway it is one in 50.

Those who have not been tested cannot return to work. If they have not been tested and die with Covid-19 they will not show up in the daily death toll.

The true scale might be found in the detection rates. With the number of people being tested rising modestly, the proportion of cases detected is rising faster.

On March 25, when 6,500 people were tested, fewer than 10 per cent of tests were positive.

Every day since April 12 the detection rate has been higher than 30 per cent, with tests focused on those who are sickest or most at risk.

Until mass testing is introduced, there will be no way of knowing how many people have been infected.