Thread by @_johnbye

Shocking scoop from @thetimes this weekend, which has got hold of a screen cap of an internal pillar 2 testing performance report.

It shows some labs running at or above capacity while others are idle, a huge backlog of tests to process, and thousands being voided every day!

Issue 1) there seems to be a backlog of 185,000 swab samples that have been taken but not processed yet.

This ties in with the huge number of tests that give results late or not at all, as seen in recent Test & Trace reports.

Issue 2) 3-4% of all tests are void, because of anything from issues with barcodes to (most commonly) samples leaking in transit.

They estimate 109 people who got a void result that week would have been positive, and therefore have the virus but don't know and won't be traced!

Issue 3) something is badly wrong at the Manchester Lighthouse lab (9% of tests voided, huge backlog) and Randox (5% of tests voided).

Not clear if this is a problem at the labs or with the tests they're being sent to process.

Issue 4) some labs are running at full capacity (in fact Manchester processed more tests than it's capacity on the day shown!), but Glasgow only used 2/3 of the capacity it claimed to have, despite having a backlog of 35,000 tests to process!

How accurate are capacity figures?

Issue 5) our own lab capacity has run out and we're sending tests to labs in Europe (Eurofina and Immensa).

These labs aren't always used, but are still included in the lab capacity figures!

For example, here Immensa has 10,000 capacity but hasn't reported processing any tests.

Issue 6) when these foreign labs are used, things sometimes go wrong.

The article says thousands of tests sent to Eurofina's lab in Germany were transported at the wrong temperature and may end up being binned!

Issue 7) despite their swabs being recalled over safety concerns and previous issues at their lab, Randox are still being used and still causing problems.

The article says 35,000 tests were voided there in August and work is being done by minimum wage staff doing 12 hour shifts!

And that's all from me glancing at one blurry screen of one day's data.

Experts may spot further issues I missed.

And anoyingly, void data is something @fascinatorfun and others have been asking for since testing began. We now know it's being tracked but not published.

It also confirms that some or all of the 150,000 tests a fortnight done for the ONS survey are handled by Pillar 2 labs.

Which means the government's claimed lab capacity figures are misleading, even aside from the other capacity issues listed above.

h/t to @fascinatorfun, whose own thread on the story is here -

Bonus issue) h/t @PsyberAttack for pointing out that the number of new tests made available on that day exceeded the available lab capacity!

Home and satellite tests seem to be the number sent out though, so not all will be used immediately (or at all).

Also an interesting report here from @JenWilliamsMEN suggesting that pillar 2 labs that used students over the summer may now be running into staffing issues as they go back to university, while confirming that pillar 1 and 2 labs have been kept separate.