Labour demands urgent answers on levels of coronavirus testing

Jon Ashworth is calling on the government to outline why testing for coronavirus has not yet been scaled up to “sufficient levels” after ministers appeared to make contradictory claims on the number of tests being reached per day.

Labour’s health spokesperson made the intervention following comments from health minister Helen Whately on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, in which she suggests only “around 7,000” people were tested on Sunday.

Her comments come despite Health Secretary Matt Hancock having tweeted that the target had been reached, and Michael Gove having reported the same to The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning.

Commenting on the level of testing, Ashworth said: “Experts continue to call for the UK to significantly ramp up testing. When Germany is testing around 500,000 people a week, many are asking why we are still not even hitting the 10,000 a day promised on March 11th.

“We called for enforced social distancing, but it is a blunt tool without a national strategy to test and contact trace. At today’s Downing Street press conference, we call on ministers to outline why testing is still not being scaled up at sufficient levels and what bottlenecks domestically and globally are hindering this.”

Departmental updates on Twitter revealed that fewer than 7,000 tests had been conducted in the 24-hour period between 9am on March 28th and the same time on March 29th.

It is understood that the number of total testing capacity has reached 10,949, but the number of tests actually carried out in a day was 9,114, and the number of individuals tested was 7,000.

The UK is testing a relatively low number of people when compared with some other countries fighting the pandemic. Germany is testing 71,000 people each day, while the US is testing 65,000.

A total of 19,522 cases of coronavirus have been recorded in the UK since the outbreak of the virus, but the true figure is estimated to be much higher. There have been 1,228 recorded deaths so far.

The death figures currently being published are those recorded by NHS England’s automated system for deaths in hospitals. From tomorrow, there will be data available on coronavirus deaths that occur in the community.