Last night we published a story on how a breakdown in communications between two government agencies led to the UK missing out on thousands of coronavirus tests.
It helps to understand some of the challenges being now faced trying to ramp up capacity buzzfeed.com/richholmes/uk-…
It helps to understand some of the challenges being now faced trying to ramp up capacity buzzfeed.com/richholmes/uk-…
Public Health England first contacted the government’s animal health agency at the end of January to ask about potential volunteers to help with testing in the event of a possible escalation in the coronavirus outbreak, emails seen by @BuzzFeedNews show
PHE didn't follow up until March. During the course of several communications last month, the requests changed several times. For example, there were discussions about using the animal health agency's main lab to test, but technical difficulties were later cited
It wasn't until March 30 - some 8 weeks after the first email - that volunteers were informed that they would be contacted for training, with a view to being ready to work in PHE and NHS labs by mid-April.
It was also agreed that APHA would “loan critical analytical equipment”
It was also agreed that APHA would “loan critical analytical equipment”
On the plus side, the correspondence suggests that there is now an ongoing effort to increase testing numbers to "100,000 PCR [polymerase chain reaction] tests a day"
Full story: buzzfeed.com/richholmes/uk-…
