Coronavirus: Government rhetoric on testing 'nowhere near matches the reality'

[dutchman]

The government said testing would help "turn the tide" against coronavirus but why have they been so slow to do it?



It was a couple of weeks ago the prime minister declared at his daily coronavirus news conference that he wanted to get to 250,000 tests a day. This would be how Britain would beat the disease.

"The knowledge of where the virus is will make a huge difference to our management of the disease and our ability to reduce disruption and economic difficulty," the prime minister said as he talked of the possible rapid roll-out of an antibody test "as simple as a pregnancy test" which could determine if someone has had COVID-19.

The number of cases and deaths are growing at a frightening rate and the government is unable to give us many straight answers to straight questions when it comes to testing.

Alok Sharma, the business secretary, simply couldn't give an answer when asked at the news conference on Wednesday exactly when the government might be able to start rolling out the antibody tests Mr Johnson was promising a couple of weeks ago.

Tests ordered by the government were being "urgently evaluated" but as to when they could be circulated to the wider population to get Britain back on its feet - still unknown.

And the government has even been struggling to use all the limited capacity it does have.

Of the 12,750 test capacity it had on Wednesday, 10,426 tests were carried out.

One clear factor has been the government's edict - now lifted - that only up to 15% of NHS staff could be tested for COVID-19 in order to ensure there was capacity for those taken to hospital to be tested.

Just over 2,000 NHS frontline staff have been tested - a drop in the ocean of the estimated 125,000 who are currently off work due to symptoms or because they are self-isolating.

This is a terrible waste of resources at the most critical of times.

The prime minister is acutely aware that if he doesn't deliver on this promise to ramp-up testing - particularly for NHS staff putting their lives on the line - then public support for him and his government's handling of the crisis could begin to fall away.

That perhaps explains why Mr Johnson issued an impromptu video message from his No 11 bunker on Thursday night to reassure the public that he was still in the driving seat and would deliver on testing.

He said: "We are massively increasing testing. And I want to say a special word about testing because it is so important and I have said for weeks and weeks that this is the way through. This is how we will unlock the coronavirus puzzle. This is how we will defeat it in the end."

Repeating his promises from two weeks ago again.

Now the clock is really ticking on the delivery.

[Melisandre]

I suppose testing is one way of getting every ones DNA to use against us next time as they can develop germ war fare just to kill one person if they choose.