One additional testing factor, which we reported on yesterday — buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/uk… — is the set up of labs dedicated to COVID-19 testing, and how different countries have different approaches
For example, Germany has at least 174 labs processing results. South Korea was quick to develop and launch within weeks a network of hundreds testing sites and about 100 labs processing results. Both have a distributed approach.
The UK has a more centralised approached. It had one PHE lab (which was also validating all positive results, though that is no longer the case), now extended to 12, and is helping NHS labs tool up — this takes time.
This stems back to policy decisions, as professor Sharon Peacock, the director of the national infection service at Public Health England (PHE), told a Science and Technology Committee hearing of MPs last week: 
The issue isn't so much overall lab capacity — the UK has loads of labs, some of the best scientists in the world etc etc — but how resources have been structured and can be used i.e. labs dedicated to COVID-19, as Greg Clark MP explains:
