England will carry out 100,000 tests for coronavirus every day by the end of this month, Health Secretary Matt Hancock pledged yesterday.
Increased testing for the NHS will form part of a new 5-pillar plan, bringing together government, industry, academia, the NHS and many others, to dramatically increase the number of tests being carried out each day.
Mr Hancock’s announcement comes following increasing criticism of the government’s slow response to both testing for coronavirus and provision of vital personal protective equipment (PPE).
On Wednesday, trade unions urged the government to ensure essential workers get access to live-saving protective equipment in an open letter to ministers.
The letter, signed by the TUC, UNISON, RCM, GMB, Unite, BDA and CSP, said: “Our members care for the sick and the elderly, they look after our children and keep them safe, they make sure there is food on the supermarket shelves, they keep the lights on and the water running.
“We are weeks into fighting Covid-19. It is now clear that the lack of personal protective equipment for frontline workers has become a crisis within a crisis.”
The letter adds: “Workers are being exposed to unreasonable and unnecessary risk by the ongoing failure to provide key workers with adequate PPE.
“Every day we hear from our members that despite repeated assurances from government, people are being asked to work with inadequate or out of date protective equipment – and that is where PPE is being provided at all.”
The letter states starkly the risks faced by key workers. “They are risking their own health and safety for us. We must be clear what that means, those who are subject to prolonged and direct exposure to the virus – such as health and social care professionals – are risking their lives.”
Calling for urgent government action to increase PPE supply, the letter adds there must be “transparency on procurement, distribution, timescales and exactly how and when workers can expect to get the protection they need and deserve,” adding “we call on the government and employers to guarantee that no member of staff will be put under pressure to perform tasks without adequate protective equipment.”
The call was backed by Labour health spokesperson John Ashworth. “Labour calls on ministers to abandon attempts to gag staff and instead work closely with trade unions to ensure staff get the PPE that is so crucial to keeping them and patients safe,” he said.
The appeal – and, perhaps more importantly, criticism from loyal government supporting newspapers including the Daily Mail and the Telegraph – appears to have had an effect and the government has been stung into action.
Professor John Newton the Director of Health Improvement for Public Health England, has been appointed to help deliver the new plans and bring together industry, universities, NHS and government behind the ambitious testing targets.
He will coordinate a national effort with global manufacturers encouraged to expand their manufacturing capacity here in England; our strongest, home grown businesses in life sciences and other industries are encouraged to turn their resources to creating and rolling out mass testing at scale, and the government will support anyone with a scalable scientific idea or innovation to start a business.
New testing capabilities for the NHS and their families will support staff who are isolating at home to return safely to work if the test is negative, and keep themselves and others safe if the test is positive.
Significant progress to increase testing has already taken place across the country to protect the vulnerable, support our NHS, and ultimately save lives. New testing centres have been established at the main hotspots of the disease, and the UK has already conducted more than 152,000 tests. The 5-pillar plan sets targets to expand the England’s capability further.
The new 5-pillar plan outlines the ambitions to:
- Scale up swab testing in PHE labs and NHS hospitals for those with a medical need and the most critical workers to 25,000 a day by mid to late April;
- Deliver increased commercial swab testing for critical key workers in the NHS, before then expanding to key workers in other sectors;
- Develop blood testing to help know if people have the right antibodies and so have high levels of immunity to coronavirus;
- Conduct surveillance testing to learn more about the spread of the disease and help develop new tests and treatments; and
- Create a new National Effort for testing, to build a mass-testing capacity at a completely new scale.
Once widespread testing is available, we will prioritise repeated testing of critical key workers, to keep them safe and make sure that they do not spread the virus.
Over time, plans announced today will also see increasing focus on testing to see if people have already had the virus, to identify if they have the antibodies that will give them immunity against catching it again. This science is new and developing, but the aim is for a successful test that can be rolled out at scale, that could allow critical workers – and then the wider population – to return to work and their daily lives.
The Health Secretary also announced that over £13 BILLION of debt will be written off as part of a major financial reset for NHS providers – and community pharmacies will also receive a £300 million boost.
Seems the government has found that magic money tree after all!
