WATCH: Government failing on test, track and trace system, says Labour

Labour has said that “the government has failed on the test, track and trace system” and stressed the need for the country to “get the right systems in place to recover” from the Covid health crisis.

In an interview with Sky News this morning, Labour’s Sarah Jones discussed the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and highlighted that the UK has had “higher deaths than most other countries in the world”.

The shadow minister for policing and fire services described this as a “failing of government”. She added that “we are very clear that the government needs to do better”.

Commenting on the response, Jones said: “We are very clear that the government has failed on the test, track and trace system and they need to improve. We are very clear that we have seen higher deaths than most other countries in the world and that is a failing of government.

“We are very clear that the economic response is not up to scratch – spending £9bn giving people money for their employees to return to work when they would have returned already, not supporting more some of those very vulnerable sectors that we have been hearing about today…

“We are very clear that the government needs to do better, that this is too important not to say. We are here to try and improve outcomes for our country, not just to be opposition for opposition’s sake.”

The UK Clinical Virology Network have written to the chief medical officer for England to say that mistakes are being made in the handling of testing, with contracts being awarded on ideological grounds rather than based on expertise.

They specifically discussed the 90-minute testing announced on Monday. They said that rapid tests are already in use, and that they have no knowledge or information on the DnaNudge or LamPORE tests that the government is contracting to buy.

In the letter, the experts said that they have been sidelined by the government and shut out of talks on how the country can most effectively respond to the health crisis. The group has not had a response to its letter, sent on July 10th.