Public Health England—in response to The Sun—have confirmed by omission that they:

1. Rebuffed help from commercial labs;
2. Did not pursue a mass testing strategy.
3. Are too incompetent to be put in charge of a mass testing strategy.

Here’s what we know

PHE were quick to develop a test—but initially they limited testing to a single facility, they did not rush to roll it out.

On Feb 10, UK’s maximum capacity was 100 tests per a day.

Nowhere near enough to screen people with potential COVID-19.

Testing was largely limited to recent travellers from known hotspots, that meant we didn’t see cases from as-yet unknown hotspots or the transmission in the community.

After Feb 10, PHE expanded testing to their dozen labs. At that point testing capacity would increase to 1,000 per a day.

They did not begin to include NHS labs till March.

Meanwhile, offers from universities, charities, companies and animal labs were rebuffed.

PHE unironically called this strategy “command and control”.

They wanted to stay in charge of the entire process, but as a result capacity was extremely limited.

PHE have actively discouraged private sector tests, despite the implication above that they were supportive by releasing a protocol.

The centralisation and lack of early testing has had dire consequences for the UK’s response.

PHE claimed there was no evidence of community transmission in late February.

In retrospect, an epidemiological impossibility. A community outbreak had begun.

But we didn’t know about the threat, we weren’t testing, which delayed the response.

PHE continued to miss 10,000 and now the 25,000 daily test target.

The failure continues.

In late March, PHE requestioned a single brand of machine from companies and universities for super labs that have taken more weeks to become operational.

PHE has chosen to focus on super labs—rather than using the skills of existing labs who could have begun testing months ago.

The Govt has commissioned AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline to undertake 30k daily tests with Cambridge University, but this won’t be ready till May.

Centralisation of testing to a small number of mega labs is problematic. Creates high risk of failure.

Logistical difficulties—getting samples to a small number of locations takes a lot of time—may help explain gap between Govt capacity and actual test numbers.

There are still many hundreds of willing and capable labs that PHE & Government has chosen not to activate for the national testing effort.

They could be asked to test *in addition* to the super labs to truly ramp up capacity as quickly as possible.

There are also reports that PHE has failed to provide samples to companies developing new tests, thereby preventing innovation.

This is extremely disappointing: everyone needs to be on board for testing.

We’re quite some way off from a cure and a vaccine, which if we are going to be honest, may never come.

The quickest path out of this mess is to find every single case and stop the outbreak altogether. This means a lot more testing capacity.

The chances of reaching 100,000 tests per a day by the end of the month are looking increasingly unlikely. Yesterday, just 19,316 were tested.

But even that target, seen by many as “ambitious,” won’t be enough.

Extrapolating modelling released in a Harvard University paper, the U.K. will need at a minimum *500,000* tests per a day to test everyone who comes down with cold and flu symptoms and the recent contacts of positive cases.

Sorry that was longer than I planned:

The key point is that we need testing, a lot more testing, to prevent the spread of this virus, save lives and help life get back to normal.

We need everyone who can to be allowed and encouraged to do that testing.