Government won’t say when ‘ambition’ of 250,000 tests a day will actually happen

Britain tested fewer than 29,000 people today - six days before it is supposed to reach 100,000.

The government has declined to say when Boris Johnson’s target of 250,000 daily coronavirus tests will be met. 

Britain tested fewer than 29,000 people in the last day – but the government has repeatedly insisted it is ‘on target’ to reach 100,000 per day by the end of the month, which is six days away. The prime minister has previously said the aim was to test 250,000 people a day – two and a half times the number later promised by the health secretary Matt Hancock.

Speaking at the daily coronavirus press briefing this evening, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the quarter of a million target was an ‘ambition’. Pressed by Metro.co.uk on when that target would be met, Mr Shapps twice failed to provide a date. 

He said: ‘I think it was an ambition from the prime minister and actually I think the fact we’ve been able to go from 7,000 tests a day being carried out on average each day and it now looks likely we will get certainly to the 100,000 capacity and quite likely to the testing of 100,000 a day as well – shows what we can achieve.’

Mr Shapps added: ‘On the 100,000 – what we’ve been finding is the capacity has been rising pretty fast. Professor Newton just yesterday said he thinks we will get to that 100,000 ambition by the end of the month – I think we can see that because the additional testing facilities are coming online in these testing superlabs and they are starting to look at the automation of those to make them even faster.’

The PM said on March 25 that he hoped the country would ‘very soon’ reach 250,000 tests a day, before Mr Hancock said on April 2 that 100,000 by the end of April was being targeted. 

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Yesterday – when Britain tested 23,560 people – it was announced that essential workers could book tests on the government website, but today many found they were unable to book home testing minutes after opening. 

Some 46,000 people tried to book a coronavirus test on the Government’s new, with more than 10 million key workers and their households are now eligible for Covid-19 tests.

Mr Shapps said getting ‘somewhere near’ the 100,000 tests a day target would be an achievement by international standards.

He said: ‘I think that if by the end of the next week, the end of the month, we’ve got somewhere near that goal of 100,000, I think in comparative terms internationally I think that’s a very high number.’

He said there are now 31 regional drive-through sites for testing.

Asked about the PM’s target, Mr Shapps added: ‘The problem has been that there haven’t been sufficient people coming forward through the route which is quite convoluted – of someone having to go through their employer, like the NHS or perhaps a care home to take that test. 

‘What we’ve seen today is there is excess demand for tests out there and I can therefore confidently say – with the 28,000 I mentioned yesterday and the 16,000 I mentioned today, that the numbers are going to be rising pretty sharply and quite fast.’

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