A senior Tory has said the government is “likely” to hit its target for 100,000 daily coronavirus tests later as ministers faced warnings that their party’s cuts have “emaciated” the testing system.
Housing secretary Robert Jenrick said ministers hoped to meet the goal or come “very close” when results for testing figures at the end of April are announced on Friday.
But public health professor Gabriel Scally warned that Conservative cuts have stripped the testing system to the bone and damaged the UK’s ability to carry out the levels of contract tracing needed to begin to ease the lockdown.
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The comments came ahead of the daily Downing Street coronavirus briefing at which health secretary Matt Hancock is expected to announce whether he has hit the target, which he set on 2 April amid criticism about lack of testing for NHS staff and key workers. Reports suggest he will also unveil a new deadline of the end of May to implement a full nationwide tracking and tracing operation for new coronavirus sufferers and their contacts.
Officials have been working around the clock to meet Mr Hancock’s testing goal, rapidly expanding capacity as well as eligibility for tests.
Mr Jenrick told Sky News: “I think we will either have met it or be very close, and in that sense the target will have succeeded because it will have galvanised people across government, in the private sector and across the country.
“This in itself is just a stepping stone; we need to go beyond 100,000, but we have seen now a very substantial increase in testing in quite a short period of time, so in that sense it’s been a success, but there’s more to be done.”
Downing Street left open the possibility that the target may not be hit. Prime minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesperson said: “There is clearly more work that had to be done between Wednesday and Thursday. I know that the health secretary and his team were working incredibly hard to make sure that everybody who needed access to a test got one.
“I don’t know what the numbers are going to show later and I wouldn’t wish to pre-empt them. What I do know is that the health secretary’s target has been very effective in driving up capacity in the system. Getting up to be able to do almost 100,000 tests means we can test many more key workers and where people test negative they are able to end a period of self-isolation and potentially go back to work in hospitals and other parts of our public sector and key parts of the economy.”
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The spokesperson said that the government had reached its goal of deploying 96 mobile testing units and getting 49 drive-through testing centres operational by the end of April, while more than 15,000 home-testing kits were now available each day. Total testing capacity on Wednesday was 86,565 – around 14,000 short of Mr Hancock’s goal – with 81,611 tests conducted across the UK.
Despite Mr Johnson’s suggestion that face coverings will play a “useful” role in the UK’s emergence from lockdown, his spokesperson said that no formal decision has yet been made by the government on whether to recommend their use by the public.
The Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies has advised cabinet that the use of coverings such as scarves or bandanas provides a weak but positive effect in reducing transmission of coronavirus from asymptomatic carriers. The government is expected formally to recommend their use in settings such as public transport next week. But there is no question of members of the public being encouraged to use personal protective equipment (PPE) because of the danger of diverting scarce stocks away from the health and social care frontline.
Prof Scally, a former regional director of public health, cast doubt on the government’s ability to build an army of contact tracers, saying “we don’t have that infrastructure any more at regional level”.
He told BBC Newsnight: “The resilience has been stripped systematically out of the system, you cannot, when a big problem like this hits, as it does hit, you can’t just reinvent things and put them back the way you wish they were.
“If you make the system as lean and emaciated as it is, there will not be the public health staff there, there will not be the health visitors, there will not be the environmental health officers and you can’t magic them up out of nowhere.
“Simply testing key workers, health service workers and the over-65s really won’t cut it, so it needs to be a comprehensive programme.”
And Labour leader Keir Starmer said the government should be aiming to recruit at least 50,000 tracers, compared to the 18,000 currently planned.
Sir Keir told the Evening Standard: “Almost every country that has managed to get to the next stage has had testing and tracing as part of the strategy.
“The UK needs to do that too. That means hitting the 100,000 tests a day target, but then going further.
“The prime minister previously promised 250,000 tests a day. The government’s advisers will know whether that is precisely the right target. But I do believe the government should recommit to such an ambition.”
Meanwhile, Sir Paul Nurse, chief executive of biomedical research centre the Francis Crick Institute, said the 100,000 tests a day target was “a PR stunt” and warned that testing strategy had not been handled properly.
“It was, as far as I’m concerned, a bit of a PR stunt which has gone a bit wrong,” he said.
“Where was the strategy under that? I haven’t seen a strategy under it. It just sounded good.”
On Thursday, Mr Johnson said the UK was “past the peak” of the coronavirus outbreak and promised to set out plans next week on how the lockdown would be lifted.
Mr Johnson said he would be producing a “road map, a menu of options” explaining how to get the economy moving and children back to school while still suppressing the disease’s spread.
