Another interesting story from inside the testing system in @thesundaytimes today, this time reporting on issues at Randox, who seem to provide a quarter of current Pillar 2 capacity.
Tests are often delayed or voided, with other contracts taking priority over national testing!
As well as the UK government, Randox also has testing contracts with Premiership Rugby and Dubai.
Their tests are apparently given VIP treatment, while Pillar 2 tests from across the UK can wait days to be processed.
Insiders say Randox has taken on too much and can't keep up.
Underpaid staff are being asked to work 12 hour shifts to keep the lab running 24/7.
Randox admits its lab is running "at and beyond capacity" and receiving more tests from the UK government than its stated capacity.
This is clearly not sustainable.
Randox deny that their lab voids a particularly high proportion of tests.
But the government doesn't publish this data, and last weekend's ST story showed Randox second only to Manchester in tests voided (5%) and taking more than 24 hours to give a result (91%) on September 9th.
Without this internal data being published, it's impossible to say if that's their normal performance, or where and why tests are delayed or voided.
But Randox have certainly had numerous issues in the past.
In May technical issues at Randox resulted in 67,000 tests being flown to America for processing!
Almost 30,000 of these tests were voided in the process.
At the time we were only doing 50,000 tests a day.
google.com/amp/s/amp.theg…
Then in July the government's pledge to regularly test care homes was thrown into chaos after swabs provided by Randox were found to not be sterile.
Use of their swabs was "paused", and a few weeks later 750,000 of them were recalled.
gov.uk/government/new…
The pause on using Randox swabs on July 15 precisely coincides with a sharp drop in Pillar 2 lab capacity, knocking up to 18,000 tests a day off available capacity.
Two days after Pillar 2 labs hit 100% capacity on August 22 this capacity returned.
All forgiven in desperation?
Full @thesundaytimes report from @TomCalver2 and @Gabriel_Pogrund here -
thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/r…
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