Let's just break down where the government are getting their figure of the 133,784 Covid-19 tests which they say were carried out yesterday, because it's quite confusing... (THREAD)
27,090 tests come under Pillar 4 - these are tests carried out by the Office for National Statistics, universities & other research groups. These are not done to diagnose Covid but to learn more about the prevalence of the virus and the accuracy of home testing. 
Pillar 4 tests are the biggest area of growth. Last week the highest daily figure was around 4,000. As these tests are not for diagnostic purposes, the Department for health doesn't count the people who receive these as people tested, but does still count them as tests completed.
The 32,207 tests in Pillar 1 represents testing done in labs and NHS hospitals for patients who need to be tested, and health workers. Pillar 2 is testing for essential workers and their households these are both tests done at drive through centres and home tests.
We can see that 40,727 home tests were posted yesterday. These tests are counted when they are put in the post, BUT we don't know how many people carried out their tests or returned their tests. The Department for Health don't provide data on this.
If you strip out postal tests (because we don't know how many were actually done and returned) and research tests (because they're not diagnostic) then yesterday there were 65,967 tests done on 28,863 people.
The Department for Health say all testing is run at discretion of clinicians and they may run tests more than once if they feel that is the appropriate course of action.
We've been following this on @bbcmoreorless and will continue to do so over the coming weeks - you can listen to our coverage here: bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…
