Coronavirus: Matt Hancock insists ‘tests ARE available’ despite people queuing for hours

Matt Hancock has insisted that coronavirus ‘tests are available’ despite people waiting in queues that last for hours, only to be turned away by swab centres on arrival.

The Health Secretary and other No10 officials have said they are not aware of anything to suggest that tests are not available ‘in some parts of the country’ as there are reports of a nationwide testing fiasco. 

When asked about testing availability, a No10 spokesman told reporters: ‘We are ramping up capacity or we are working to ramp up capacity in terms of tests. We are obviously targeting those tests in terms of areas where we are seeing higher rates of infections.

He was asked: ‘Are you saying tests are available in every part of the country, despite the fact that many of our readers and viewers are saying that they are not?

He replied: ‘You have seen the Health Secretary’s words. I am not aware of anything to suggest that tests aren’t available in some parts of the country.’ 

But desperate Britons have told of their battle to get a coronavirus swab this week, as two parents missed an appointment for their daughter as they were stuck in traffic for three hours.

Parents Thandio and Marcio missed their slot for the newly-opened testing centre in Catford, Lewisham, after being stuck in traffic leading up to the facility.

Their 11-year-old daughter had been rushed to hospital in an ambulance that morning, but when she was discharged, A&E medics told her parents to book her in for a swab at a testing centre, the Daily Telegraph reported.

They told the newspaper at the scene: ‘There’s no one here. We had an appointment but we missed it because were stuck in traffic. She’ll need to go into isolation and our other children can’t go to school.’ 

Cars were stuck in hours of gridlocked traffic when queuing for the testing facility on Thursday, with the hold-ups causing tailbacks and delays on the South Circular. 

The testing centre was plunged into chaos yesterday as hundreds of people were turned away after not being sent important QR codes, while other testing centres across the country have been practically deserted this week. 

A technical error led to people who had booked appointments being refused a swab as they were not sent a confirmation email containing a barcode which needed to be scanned to verify their bookings. 

The nationwide Covid testing fiasco continues to rage on:

• Nine in ten hotspots recorded no new cases on September 15 and September 16 as laboratories dealt with the backlog;
• Concerns about the Government’s ‘Lighthouse Labs’ ability to produce results due to staff and equipment shortages; 
• Test and trace workers are taking two weeks to contact friends, relatives and contacts of those who test positive; 
• Ministers have defended the shambolic testing system as thousands of people struggle to get checked for the disease, after Dido Harding claimed no-one expected the scale of demand as schools returned; 
• Baroness Harding claimed ‘no one saw’ sudden spike in test demand coming despite return of schools; 
• Lancashire is set for tighter lockdown rules, with a curfew set to go in place, but exemptions for Blackpool;
• Matt Hancock told the Today programme hospital admissions in the UK are doubling every eight days

People were left furious when they were told to rebook their appointments after queueing in hours of heavy traffic to attend the drive-in centre.

The chaos comes as amid a nationwide testing fiasco, with other Covid sites being pictured completely deserted following the Government admitting that there is not enough capacity in the testing system.

Covid testing facilities in Leeds, Oxfordshire and at Heathrow and Manchester airport were empty on Friday while other centres, including Catford, remain overrun with patients this week.

The Catford testing site closed down its operation amid the chaos on Thursday but members of the public continued to arrive by car and on foot.

Charlotte, a 32-year-old primary school teacher from Bromley, told News Shopper she witnessed ‘every single car being refused’ for the same reason during the hour she spent on the Catford site trying to rebook her test.

She said: ‘Some people where behaving extremely unacceptably towards the staff, shouting at and threatening them.

‘The whole experience was very unsafe.

‘Many people – who come for a test and therefore were clearly suspected carriers – were taking their masks off to hurl abuse at the staff, or while they were talking to 119 on the phone.’

Charlotte and her ten-year-old son had both developed coronavirus symptoms but she claimed she was unable to rebook a test because she was told none were available.

The South Circular was gridlocked as people were turned away from the testing facility yesterday, with the car park overflowing with patients desperate to be tested. 

Tom Copley, Deputy Mayor of London for Housing, tweeted: ‘Massive gridlock in Catford.

‘Turns out a drive through Covid testing centre has been opened here. All roads inc south circular totally gridlocked.

‘And after all that nobody is getting tested because none of them have received a QR code. Shambles doesn’t even begin to describe it.’

One grandmother told the Telegraph that she was turned away three times after booking an appointment at 3pm, while another frustrated father with two daughters in the back seats was reportedly given the ‘timeout’ hand gesture by staff after repeatedly honking his horn.

A police officer reportedly arrived on the scene in a bid to help guide the traffic, but was unable to tell them much apart from reiterating that they could not move.

G4S, which runs the Catford testing site, said that they are not responsible for the booking system or QR codes, which are issued by the Government’s online booking system. 

But the Department of Health and Social Care said that sites can use other information ‘to confirm an appointment if a QR code cannot be provided’. 

A spokesperson said: ‘NHS Test and Trace is providing tests at an unprecedented scale – 225,000 a day on average over the last week. There has been a spike in demand in recent weeks and the message is clear – only people with symptoms should be requesting a test.

‘People who have booked a valid appointment at a testing site will receive a test – sites can use other key information to confirm an appointment if a QR code cannot be provided.

‘We are doing everything possible to ensure those who need a test can get a test by targeting capacity at the areas that need it most, including those where there is an outbreak, and prioritising at-risk groups.’

A testing centre in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, has reportedly had similar technical issues to the Catford site over the last few days, leaving the centre completely deserted. 

Staff at the Covid testing site at Oxford Parkway reportedly said that there has been an error in the system, meaning the OX postcode is unable to generate the required QR codes.

The site was pictured completely deserted this morning following the reported issues, with patients being supposedly being given appointments as far away as Edinburgh instead. 

And Doxford Park testing centre in Sunderland had similar difficulties as around 50 cars piled up outside the facility. 

Security guards had stopped many people half a mile away from the site and told them to go somewhere else as the ‘computers have crashed’, the Telegraph reported. 

The testing chaos comes as other Covid testing centres across the country have been empty while others are overrun with people desperate for a swab.

A testing centre in Leeds was pictured completely deserted on Wednesday as the Government announced that Covid swabs will have to be rationed due to test shortages.

An airport testing facility in Manchester was seen practically empty on Friday with few cars arriving at the drive-in centre, despite their being numerous empty stations available.  

A Twickenham MP has also said that her south-west London constituents had been told to travel to Aberdeen to book a test.

Munira Wilson, Lib Dem health spokesman, said: ‘We were promised a world-beating test and trace system but what we have at the moment is an utter shambles.’

Ministers first faced a crisis over testing early on in the first wave of Covid when a campaign by the Mail led to Mr Hancock vowing to deliver 100,000 tests a day.

That pledge was later raised to 200,000, then 500,000 by the end of October and now four million by next February under the ambitious ‘Operation Moonshot’.

However, the system has been thrown back into chaos in recent days because demand for tests has massively increased, overwhelming laboratories.

Matt Hancock admitted earlier this week that testing would have to be rationed during the nationwide testing fiasco as fears of a second coronavirus wave rise.

The Health Secretary announced that Covid tests could be rationed with a ‘priority list’ to make sure that environments such as care homes and hospitals would have enough tests.

Mr Hancock was also forced to admit in Commons that the current critical shortages could drag on for weeks, after the public had previously been told to seek tests ‘if in doubt’.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also admitted that there is not enough capacity in the testing system after demand ‘massively accelerated’ in recent weeks.

He has urged people to follow the new ‘rule of six’ as he warned that actions to stop a second surge of coronavirus must be ‘tough now’ in order to ‘protect’ Christmas.

A leading scientist has also warned today that Covid testing ‘is dying on its a**e’, as he said he was ‘appalled by what I saw’ at the Government’s testing labs. 

Concerns have been raised about the Government’s seven ‘Lighthouse Labs’ and their ability to process results, due to shortages of staff and equipment. 

Genomics scientist and inventor Phil Robinson told The Times that the Lighthouse Labs were poorly managed, running out of staff and failed to set up automatic processes before a second wave of infections. 

He told the paper: ‘Every part of the process was poor. The other ludicrous issue they have is they have 20 different types of tube coming into the lab. When you are running a high throughput lab it’s only sensible to have one. Why they haven’t standardised that I have no idea.’

Baroness Dido Harding, who leads the test and trace system, also admitted yesterday that demand for swabs is up to four times capacity. 

But she declared that the sudden rise, which follows children returning to school and parents going back to the office, had not been predicted – despite repeated warnings.

Concerns have been echoed by Nicola Sturgeon, who yesterday said she still has concerns about the amount of time being taken to process coronavirus tests at UK Government laboratories. 

And NHS Providers, which represents NHS trust leaders, argued that the country was ‘a long way off where we need to be with testing’.

On Thursday, the Government announced that it was launching two new ‘Lighthouse’ testing labs in Newcastle and Bracknell.

Accompanying new sites in Newport and Charnwood, the four labs promise to increase capacity to deliver 500,000 tests per day by the end of October, DHSC said. 

Plans have also been released for a Lighthouse laboratory dealing with testing and a Covid-19 research hub, which could create 1,100 jobs in the North East of England. 

The new facility would serve the region, as well as northern Cumbria and Yorkshire, and would be the latest expansion of the Government’s national Test and Trace programme.

The Lighthouse lab will be based in Gateshead with a specialist innovation lab at the Helix site in Newcastle, focused on developing new approaches to coronavirus science.

The project will be a partnership between Newcastle City Council and the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, as well as public health teams, local universities and industry.

Deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery said trust leaders were ‘increasingly concerned’ that testing shortages could put pressure on NHS services and winter preparations due to growing staff absences.

‘Trust leaders are concerned that they do not have the detail on why there are shortages, how widespread they are or how long they will last,’ she added.

The nationwide testing fiasco continues as 10million people are told to follow new lockdown rules as Lancashire is placed under curfew alongside the North East. 

The Government’s chief science and medical officers have warned that another serious outbreak of coronavirus could lead to a significant number of deaths by the end of next month.

Although there has been no final decision on new measures, the BBC said it could involve the closure of key hospitality businesses for a fortnight.

Schools and most workplaces would stay open, but pubs and restaurants could have their opening hours restricted.

The idea of conducting the lockdown over the half-term holidays has also been mooted.  

It’s NOT just chaos at swab sites: Scientist lifts lid on hidden shambles at UK test processing labs

By Amie Gordon and Sam Blanchard Senior Health Reporter For MailOnline 

A leading scientist has today warned that Covid testing ‘is dying on its a**e’, as he said he was ‘appalled by what I saw’ at the Government’s testing labs. 

Concerns have been raised about the Government’s seven ‘Lighthouse Labs’ and their ability to process results, due to shortages of staff and equipment. 

Genomics scientist and inventor Phil Robinson told The Times that the Lighthouse Labs were poorly managed, running out of staff and failed to set up automatic processes before a second wave of infections. 

He told the paper: ‘Every part of the process was poor. The other ludicrous issue they have is they have 20 different types of tube coming into the lab. When you are running a high throughput lab it’s only sensible to have one. Why they haven’t standardised that I have no idea’. 

Amid chaos in the laboratories the Government’s test and trace system is also ‘barely functional’, with workers taking up to two weeks to contact friends, relatives and workmates of those who have tested positive for Covid-19.

Baroness Dido Harding, who leads the test and trace system, admitted yesterday that demand for swabs is up to four times capacity, but declared the sudden rise as children returned to school and parents went back to the office had not been predicted – despite repeated warnings.

Leeds and Lancashire are expected to face enhanced lockdown measures in the coming days, as delays see 90 per cent of tests being turned around outside the 24-hour target. 

Around 9.2million Britons are living under enhanced restrictions to curb outbreaks in their regions, after the North East was added to the ever-growing list yesterday. 

On Thursday, the Government announced that it was launching two new ‘Lighthouse’ testing labs in Newcastle and Bracknell.

Accompanying new sites in Newport, Wales, and Charnwood in the Midlands, the four labs promise to increase capacity to deliver 500,000 tests per day by the end of October, DHSC said.

The Newcastle and Bracknell facilities are not expected to be fully operational until March and February, respectively.

NHS Providers, which represents NHS trust leaders, argued that the country was ‘a long way off where we need to be with testing’.

Plans have also been released for a Lighthouse laboratory dealing with testing and a Covid-19 research hub, which could create 1,100 jobs in the North East of England.

The new facility would serve the region, as well as northern Cumbria and Yorkshire, and would be the latest expansion of the Government’s national Test and Trace programme.

The Lighthouse Lab will be based in Gateshead with a specialist innovation lab at the Helix site in Newcastle, focused on developing new approaches to coronavirus science.

The project will be a partnership between Newcastle City Council and the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, as well as public health teams, local universities and industry.

Deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery said trust leaders were ‘increasingly concerned’ that testing shortages could put pressure on NHS services and winter preparations due to growing staff absences.

‘Trust leaders are concerned that they do not have the detail on why there are shortages, how widespread they are or how long they will last,’ she added.

Reacting to the latest test and trace figures, Justin Madders, Labour’s shadow health minister, said it was a ‘huge concern’ that the test and trace system performance ‘continues to go backwards’ and appeared’on the verge of collapse’.

He added: ‘Perhaps the biggest problem is that people cannot get tested, which means thousands of people are not going into the system in the first place. Ministers must get a grip and fix testing now.’ 

Dr Mike Skinner, who volunteered to work in a Lighthouse Laboratory dealing with Covid-19 tests, said half the work was involved in sorting the logistics of handling the samples.

The reader in virology at Imperial College London told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘In the lab, when the testing was upscaled back in March, you really had to get all kinds of sample kits from lots of different producers, there were lots of difficulties in that.

‘We had to put half of our staff into handling issues with barcoding, leaks – we actually had to remove the swabs from the tubes so they didn’t gum-up some of the robots down the line.’

He added: ‘It really is very much about logistics.’ 

Chief of the testing system, Baroness Dido Harding, has admitted that the system is not geared up to cope with the numbers of tests that people are now demanding.

Nobody was ‘expecting’ to see the ‘really sizeable increase in demand’ for checks, she said yesterday.

Baroness Harding’s comments, which come despite the return of schools and more people heading back to work, sparked outrage as she told MPs ‘none of the modelling’ had suggested there would be such a steep uptick in requests.

The head of the NHS Test and Trace programme blamed the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) for seemingly getting its predictions wrong as she said testing capacity had been built based on the panel’s recommendations. 

Meanwhile, she revealed that demand for Covid tests is currently up to four times greater than the system’s capacity. 

However, while some centres are stretched to the limit trying to deliver, others remain empty, with one worker even pictured falling asleep on the job at a site in Heathrow.

There have been numerous reports of staff at deserted walk-in testing centres turning people away if they didn’t have an appointment or weren’t showing obvious coronavirus symptoms. 

It is not clear exactly why the Heathrow site was so empty, however it is a remote drive-in centre where tests are carried out by appointment, involving swabbing through the car window.

Officials have blamed the limited capacity of the Lighthouse Labs for slowing down other elements of the testing system.

There are currently seven of the facilities up and running, according to the UK Lighthouse Labs Network, in Milton Keynes, Cheshire, Glasgow, Cambridge, Antrim in Northern Ireland, Newport and Loughborough.

The lab system is ultimately controlled by the Department of Health, which hand-picks existing laboratories around the country and pays them to process Covid-19 tests in a standardised way.

There is not a threshold a lab must meet to become a Lighthouse Lab, but all are capable of processing tens of thousands of tests per day and have capacity to expand. 

No new labs have been built, but institutions at universities and pharmaceutical companies are given new equipment, improved lab spaces and money to hire their own qualified staff to cope with the demand. Some of the labs use existing staff.

Labs being used so far include ones at pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, the universities of Cambridge, Glasgow and Dundee, and the scientific organisations UK Biocentre, Medicines Discovery Catapult and US-based PerkinElmer.  

Alongside the Lighthouse Labs, the Government also uses facilities run by Public Health England, the NHS and other smaller universities and institutions known as ‘surge labs’.

New labs are being set up in an ongoing expansion of the programme, with sites expected to open soon in Newcastle and Bracknell, Berkshire. 

Newly-opened labs do not run at full capacity straight away and those are not expected to be working in full swing until February (Bracknell) and March (Newcastle), when they will be able to process a combined 120,000 tests per day.  

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has admitted up to 250,000 Britons could be waiting for their Covid-19 test result because of a mammoth backlog in Government laboratories, which has meant tens of thousands of swabs are being held up in a process that is only supposed to take 24 hours.

In response to criticism from furious MPs this week, he said there is a hold-up of ‘less than a day’s capacity’ caused by ‘operational challenges’ in laboratories. The Department of Health claims it can process 245,000 swab tests per day.

The backlog has reportedly been caused by staff finishing temporary contracts and surging demand as cases continue to increase across the UK – and one scientist claimed the Government’s claim of how many tests it can process may not actually be true. 

Whitehall sources say the actual cause of the crisis is a ‘secret’, while one leading scientist dismissed claims of a staffing shortage and said labs appear to have enough technicians. 

Jonathan Ashworth, Shadow Health Secretary for Labour, claimed the system was in difficulty because post-graduate science students who had been working in the labs over the summer were now leaving.

He said in Parliament today: ‘Extra demand on the system was inevitable. So why didn’t [Matt Hancock] use the summer to significantly expand NHS capacity and fix contact tracing?

‘And just as demand is increasing, the ability to process tests is diminishing. Post-grad students working in the Lighthouse Labs are returning to university, so why did we not plan for these inevitable staff shortages in the Lighthouse Labs?’

An expert in the field said many technicians had been drafted in on intense short-term contracts during the crisis but were now going back to their everyday jobs.

Doris-Ann Williams, chief executive of the British In Vitro Diagnostics Association (BIVDA), told The Telegraph: ‘People worked really, really hard for the first three or four months. 

‘I think everyone just ran out of steam, needed to recharge their batteries. 

‘It could be that it’s just getting back up to strength again after everyone has had a bit of a break in August.’

But one leading scientist was not convinced that the problem was quite as simple as ‘lab capacity’.

Professor Alan McNally, a University of Birmingham expert who helped set up the Government’s Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab, said a ‘perfect storm’ of events have crashed the testing system.

He told BBC Breakfast there were ‘clearly underlying issues which nobody wants to tell us about’.

He said: ‘The labs are still fully staffed, they are still churning through huge amounts of samples per day – the same number as they were a couple of months ago – so there are problems elsewhere in the chain…

‘I think this is multi-factorial. I think you almost have a perfect storm of events that have come together to almost essentially crash the testing system.

‘I think there is a surge in demand [and] I think our stated capacity is very different from actually how many tests can be run in a given day.’  

Concerns have been echoed by Nicola Sturgeon, who yesterday said she still has concerns about the amount of time being taken to process coronavirus tests at UK Government laboratories.

The First Minister again spoke of pressures on the testing system in England which have caused a delay in people getting results.

Her comments came as a UK Government minister insisted coronavirus testing capacity in Scotland is ‘increasing enormously’.

Iain Stewart also said that if decisions need to be made over who should be the priority for testing in Scotland, that would be for the Scottish Government.

Coronavirus tests in England are to be rationed as the Government at Westminster struggles to get to grips with soaring demand.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there will be testing ‘prioritisation’ for people with acute clinical need and those in social care settings, as he acknowledged ‘operational challenges’ in the system.

First Minister Ms Sturgeon stressed on Tuesday there was ‘not by and large’ an issue with getting tests north of the border.

But she said ‘constraints’ at the UK Government’s Lighthouse laboratories meant results were being delayed – an issue she has raised in talks with Mr Hancock and Dido Harding, the head of the UK testing system.

Speaking at her briefing on Wednesday, the First Minister said: ‘Although we continue to have some concerns about the time being taken to process tests in the Lighthouse laboratories, there are no signs at this stage of people in Scotland facing widespread difficulties in booking a test.’

She said the backlog in testing is now reducing and her Government will ‘monitor these issues very closely’.

She added she is considering if the regular testing of care home staff – which is currently dealt with by the Lighthouse laboratory system – could be taken over by the NHS in some areas.

Ms Sturgeon said: ‘The reason we have been looking at that is to see if we can free up capacity within the UK system, given the pressure it has been experiencing.’

Mr Stewart stressed the UK Government, which he said is responsible for the majority of testing in Scotland, is acting on the problems.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, he said the Government is ‘increasing the overall capacity’ in the testing system.

He insisted it is right that the UK Government had acted to prioritise access for testing in England to key workers and those in care homes.

Asked what should happen in Scotland, Mr Stewart said: ‘That is for the Scottish Government to determine.

‘What we are doing as a UK Government is increasing enormously the availability of testing in Scotland.

‘I am glad that the Scottish Government are increasing their side of testing but the majority of testing in Scotland is run by UK bodies, and we are expanding that. There will be another walk- through centre opening in Glasgow in the next few days, so that availability will be there.

‘At this point we just ought to say a huge thank-you to the people at the Lighthouse lab in Glasgow who are working 24/7. When they first started off they were doing about 40 tests a day, they’re now doing tens of thousands.’

The new walk-in testing centre at the Arc Sport Centre in Glasgow is due to open on Friday afternoon, the Scotland Office said.

With a walk-in centre already open in St Andrews, Ms Sturgeon said plans are ‘on track’ for a further four such facilities to open in the next two weeks as part of a move to ‘establish 20 more walk-in centres across Scotland over the autumn and winter’.

The 90-minute coronavirus test that’s 94% accurate: On-the-spot Covid-19 screening that delivers result in less than two hours could transform diagnosis this winter, experts say

An on-the-spot Covid test which delivers a result in 90 minutes could transform diagnosis in NHS hospitals this winter, experts say.

A study published last night revealed the CovidNudge test – a machine the size of a shoebox – does not deliver any ‘false positive’ results, meaning all those who test positive are carrying the virus.

It has a ‘specificity’ of 94 per cent – meaning 6 per cent of those given the all-clear will actually have the virus – but this is far better than the 70 per cent specificity rate seen with the standard Covid test.

The NHS has already ordered 5,000 machines and 5.8 million testing cartridges, at the cost of about £30 per test. 

Eventually the machines could be used in schools, theatres and even private homes. They were used by the London Symphony Orchestra last month to give musicians the all-clear to perform at the Proms.

Some 10,000 people have been tested on the NHS so far, with a major roll-out due in the coming weeks.

The machine, designed by Imperial College London spinout company DnaNudge, is particularly useful for hospitals because it can be used at a patient’s bedside.

Because the turnaround time is so quick, doctors can make rapid treatment decisions without waiting hours or days for laboratory results.

The process involves collecting nasal and throat swabs and placing them on to a cartridge which goes into the machine – called a ‘NudgeBox’ – for analysis.

The device then looks for traces of genetic material belonging to the coronavirus.

Each machine has the ability to process up to 15 tests on the spot each day. Professor Graham Cooke, of Imperial, whose evaluation of the machine was published in the Lancet Microbe journal, said: ‘This test is particularly well suited for clinical settings when you are trying to make a rapid decision for a patient. 

‘For example, we had a patient from last week who had a new diagnosis of Covid.

‘We were able to get the diagnosis confirmed within two hours of arriving and start remdesivir and dexamethasone [drugs used to treat severe Covid-19] on that basis.’

The test is being used across eight London hospitals and is expected to be rolled out at a national level.

Professor Cooke said there was no practical reason why it could not be used in someone’s home, but for now manufacturing was being targeted at healthcare use.

And while the machine excels at speed, accuracy and ease of use, it is not the answer to the Government’s current testing problems, because each machine can process only one test at a time.

‘It is not the answer if you need millions of tests a day,’ Professor Cooke said.

The team is also modifying the device so the test can simultaneously assess other respiratory diseases.

Dr Bob Klaber, director of strategy at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: ‘Getting accurate results back to clinicians and their patients as quickly as possible makes a huge difference to how we safely manage clinical pathways and we are very much looking forward to rolling this out more widely.’

Professor Chris Toumazou, co-founder of DnaNudge, added: ‘The platform is well suited to testing in primary care and community settings with potential for use in non-healthcare settings such as care homes, schools, transport hubs, offices, and, to help bring the arts back, in theatres and venues.’