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People in England’s 10 worst hit coronavirus hot spots were unable to get tested on Monday, prompting claims of a “disaster”.
Those who tried to organize a test in the areas with the highest infection rates were told that none were available at walk-ins, vehicle service facilities or for home delivery.
One official said there were capacity and swabs available at the testing centers, but that a delay in the labs meant that people were being told that no tests were available.
It came about when Nicola Sturgeon accused Matt Hancock, the health secretary, of trying to restrict the number of people in Scotland who could get tested, as the system was overwhelmed by demand.
Scotland’s prime minister said Hancock wanted to limit the number of spaces available for testing at Scotland’s regional and mobile test centers, but his Scottish counterpart, Jeane Freeman, “managed to prevent that from happening” during end-of-year talks. week.
Sturgeon and Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister, expressed serious concerns about the backlog of evidence on Monday. Over the weekend it emerged that the government’s Lighthouse Labs were trying to clear a backlog of 185,000 tests and that some were being shipped to Germany and Italy for processing.
Gething said the Welsh government would start processing its own tests in areas with high infection rates, as it expected national problems to last “several weeks”.
He said: “This is happening at a particularly difficult time for all of us. If Matt Hancock were here today, I don’t think he would pretend it’s acceptable. It is an issue that must be resolved as urgently as possible, but I don’t think it will be resolved for several weeks ”.
Ministers previously promised to prioritize testing at Covid hotspots, but people trying to reserve swab testing in the worst affected areas were told on Monday that it was not possible, LBC reported. The theme covered Bolton, Salford, Bradford, Blackburn, Oldham, Preston, Pendle, Rochdale, Tameside, and Manchester.
Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said that the system hailed by Boris Johnson as revolutionary in the world “was not a disaster [but] now a world chaos ”.
Local officials in the hotspot areas said the national testing program had “entered a total collapse” over the weekend, with symptomatic people drifting away from otherwise quiet testing centers and told others who will drive miles from home for a test.
There was also outrage that local authorities had apparently not been told that the walk-in centers were for appointments only, a change that appears to have occurred without notice on Friday.
Three walk-ins in Oldham started turning people away over the weekend if they hadn’t booked, including symptomatic children. Oldham’s board had previously been advising anyone concerned about the coronavirus, including those without symptoms, to get tested, but was not informed of the policy change.
Council leader Sean Fielding said local authorities had been “completely undermined by incompetence” in Whitehall. “The total lack of courtesy towards local authorities when they are changing the rules for testing centers within our counties is a disgrace,” he said.
Another problem arose in Bolton on Saturday when a mobile test unit failed to appear. The absence of a private contractor reportedly left dozens of people waiting for hours in a parking lot before being sent home without proof, prompting the council to apologize.
Yasmin Qureshi, a Labor MP from Bolton South East, said the situation was “completely unacceptable” and called for an “urgent and dramatic” increase in testing in the city. Bolton has 171 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people, by far the highest in England and higher than Leicester’s rate of 135 when it entered local lockdown on June 29.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Welfare said: “It is wrong to say that testing is not available in these areas, and our capacity remains focused where it is most needed.
“While we are seeing significant demand, more than a million tests are processed each week, with about 200,000 each day on average for the last week.”
