LONDON -- The British government promised Thursday to increase testing for the new coronavirus to 10 times the current level within the month, after political opponents, scientists and newspapers lambasted Prime Minister Boris Johnson over his promises on covid-19.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who has just spent a week in quarantine after being diagnosed with the virus, said at a news conference that 100,000 tests a day would be performed by the end of April.
He said the government was enlisting the public-health service, academia and the private sector to scale up a testing capacity that has been widely called inadequate.
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"I am now setting the goal of 100,000 tests per day by the end of this month," Hancock said. "That is the goal and I am determined that we will get there."
Johnson's Conservative government vowed weeks ago to rapidly increase the number of tests for the new coronavirus to 10,000 a day, then 25,000 a day by mid-April. But progress has been slow. The government says 10,412 tests were performed Tuesday, the first time the daily target was met.
Like some other countries, the U.K. has limited virus testing to hospitalized patients, leaving people with milder symptoms unsure whether they were infected. Many scientists say wider testing -- especially of health care workers -- would allow medics who are off work with symptoms to return if their results are negative, and would give a better picture of how the virus spreads.
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Johnson tested positive for the virus a week ago and revealed last Friday that he had mild symptoms of covid-19 disease. He has continued working while in self-isolation and promised in a video message that the government was "massively increasing testing."
Testing "is how we will unlock the coronavirus puzzle. This is how we will defeat it in the end," Johnson said.
Opinion polls suggest Britons have been largely supportive of the government's efforts to contain the new coronavirus. Johnson ordered residents to stay home except for a handful of permitted circumstances and ordered the closure of schools, bars, restaurants and nonessential shops.
But as the number of virus-related deaths in the U.K. accelerated in recent days, the unity behind the government's response is shattering. Government figures showed Thursday that the country had 33,718 confirmed cases and 2,921 deaths -- an increase of 569 deaths from the day before.
The Daily Mail newspaper slammed the "testing fiasco" on its front page Thursday. "Questions without Answers," said the Daily Telegraph, accusing the government of being unable to say why Britain lagged behind its European neighbors on testing.
Critics compare Britain's approach to testing unfavorably to the one in Germany, which has the ability to test 500,000 people a week and has reported fewer deaths among people with the virus.
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The government says testing front-line health care workers is a priority, and it set up five drive-thru test centers to do it. But they had tested only 5,000 people by Thursday, from a National Health Service workforce of more than 1 million.
A Section on 04/03/2020