The government failed to increase lab capacity AT ALL over the summer, despite their own policies leading to increased demand for tests that reduced the headroom available to deal with any second wave.
Now that cases are surging the system is collapsing.
This was all avoidable.
So what went wrong?
Pillar 2 capacity hit 135,000 tests a day on June 14.
But demand started rising from the start of July.
And capacity didn't go up again until August 27.
By then labs had been running near 100% capacity for a week, leading to widespread delays and backlogs.
This first became apparent in the Test & Trace reports, which showed longer and longer delays in delivering results for home and satellite site (mostly care home) tests, and over 10,000 tests a week never delivering a result at all!
After lengthy delays in rolling out regular testing of care homes, this now seems to account for about 250,000 tests a week in England.
A quarter of all available capacity in pillar 2 labs.
Even as labs hit 100% capacity in mid-August, they also announced a big increase in the ONS Infection Survey, from 28,000 to 150,000 tests a fortnight.
Some or all of these are processed in pillar 2 labs.
At the same time, cases were starting to rise in July and local lockdowns were being introduced across large parts of the Midlands and Northern England. High risk areas on the watchlist were promised more testing.
Again, no new lab capacity was added to support this.
All of which meant there was no spare capacity left in the system to process more tests when cases recently surged nationwide.
We squandered the summer, failing to raise capacity even as labs started to struggle, leaving us unable to handle the increased demand for testing now.
On top of this, the long planned return to school seems to have predictably caused a rise in demand for testing. As children get sick, parents and schools need them to be tested to know if they have coronavirus or just a cold.
Again, why was no new capacity prepared for this?
The return to university of students in their late teens and early twenties (age groups with some of the highest infection rates at the moment), seems likely to cause another spike in demand for testing.
Again, this has been planned for months. Why aren't we ready for it?
The end result is that testing is being rationed to avoid overloading labs, many people with symptoms are going untested, and once again NHS workers are having to self-isolate because they can't get a test to see if it's safe for them to return to work.
Lab capacity finally went up slightly this month, but last weekend's Times story suggests most if not all of this is due to tests being sent to private labs (mostly overseas).
Our capacity hasn't improved.
We paid labs in Europe to make up the shortfall.
By September 9th Pillar 2 lab capacity had risen by 26,000.
But the leaked performance report in the Times lists -
3,000 at SBS (Source BioScience in Nottingham?)
10,000 at Eurofina (in Germany)
10,000 at Immensa (in Italy)
23,000 total. Almost all of the new lab capacity.
This bought in lab capacity doesn't seem to be available every day, with total capacity varying between 138,000 and 161,000 last week.
Meanwhile thousands of swabs sent to Eurofina may have ended up in the bin because they were transported across Europe at the wrong temperature!
The last we heard about real capacity increases was that a new Lighthouse Lab will come online "this month", scaling up to process 50,000 tests a day .. by the end of the year.
Meanwhile the govt is promising 500,000 a day capacity by the end of October.
Until then, with labs overstretched and a large backlog to clear (185,000 tests as of last week), it looks like test availability will continue to be limited.
And with care homes and NHS staff understandably prioritised, it will be harder than ever for anyone else to get a test.
Meanwhile the Guardian reports that NHS (pillar 1) labs received an urgent call for help to deal with the surge in demand for pillar 2 tests on August 24.
Two days after the data shows pillar 2 labs hit 100% capacity.
Aseem Malhotra has been confirmed as a speaker at next weekend's Reform UK conference. The increasingly anti-vaccine cardio crank is already Chief Health Advisor to Farage's anti-WHO "Action on World Health" campaign, and now seems to be angling for a job with Reform too. 🧵
This intersection of far right politics and anti-vaccine health contrarians in the UK is no surprise, after Reform's 2024 manifesto pandered to conspiracy theorists, many of whom helped out on their campaign or even stood as candidates for the party.
Reform's links to anti-vaxxers in the UK go back years. Richard Tice was in contact with ivermectin pusher Tess Lawrie and pandemic denier Jonathan Engler in 2021 and several Reform / Brexit Party veterans were involved in the covid conspiracy movement.
Advance UK recently announced its committee, which includes anti-vax data mangler Norman Fenton, racist conspiracy theorist Jim Ferguson, climate change denier Paul Burgess, and conspiracy theory website editor Kathy Gyngell. 🧵
Paul Burgess was environment spokesman for the far right For Britain Movement (a UKIP splinter group which, like Reform splinter group Advance UK, was backed by Tommy Robinson). He's also appeared on GB News as a "climate commentator".
Kathy Gyngell is the editor of Conservative Woman, a right wing website which during the pandemic went from attacking gay and trans rights and other culture wars nonsense to spreading anti-vaccine propaganda, covid conspiracy theories and AIDS denialism.
The co-founder of "Operation Raise the Colours" (the recent spate of people putting English flags on lamp posts) is an old friend of Tommy Robinson who says he's been "16 years by his side", and had breakfast with Robinson after his release from jail earlier this year. 🧵
Tommy Robinson's mate Andy Saxon and his "Operation Raise the Colours" have also had support from UKIP leader / Turning Point UK COO Nick Tenconi (recently seen giving what looked like a Nazi salute), far right Britain First Party and its co-leader / ex BNP member Paul Golding.
Before his "Operation Raise the Colours" gained momentum recently, Saxon posted support for Britain First and its "remigration" campaign to remove immigrants from the UK, as well as offensive and sometimes threatening Islamophobic content.
🧵 Kate Shemirani's daughter sadly died last year, after refusing chemotherapy for her cancer, in favour of the kind of extreme quackery promoted by her mum.
Refusing to take responsibility, Kate accused the NHS of homicide and subjecting her daughter to medical experimentation.
Kate Shemirani and her ex-husband issued a statement after their daughter's death, wildly claiming that it was part of "a systemic pattern of state-sponsored medical homicide and institutional cover-up" by the NHS, and suggesting that she was part of an "unregulated drug trial".
Inevitably, Kate Shemirani and her allies are using the tragedy to raise money, claiming "they have taken her daughter". Their target is up to £100,000 to challenge the outcome of an inquest that hasn't even happened yet. So far they've only raised £2,455 from gullible followers.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams has sadly got prostate cancer. After going down a rabbit hole during the pandemic though, he turned to Canadian quack William Makis who (as always) recommended ivermectin and fenbendazole. Which did not work. Now they're in an unseemly row over it. 🧵
Ivermectin pusher William Makis responded to Scott Adams' post by claiming he didn't follow his "protocol" (which Adams denies), his cancer was "probably" caused by covid vaccines, and that he "didn't discount the possibility" that Adams was part of a plot to discredit him. 😬
Unsurprisingly Scott Adams is giving short shrift to Makis and other quacks and their followers, who are trying to blame his cancer on covid vaccines or encourage him to try anti-parasitics, vitamins, fasting, diets and other dodgy "cures" for his cancer.
This week sees the second "ARC Forum" in London, a right wing talking shop with overtones of Islamophobia, transphobia and climate change denial, funded by Paul Marshall and Legatum, who are also behind GB News.
Unsurprisingly there are a lot of familiar faces there... 🧵
Alan Miller from anti-lockdown turned anti-everything group Together is on a panel.
He was interviewed at ARC Forum by right wing channel Newsmax Australia, and was apparently "shocked to learn" that, according to them, Australia has no free speech and supports trans people. 🤷♂️
Toby Young founded Daily Sceptic, which like Together started out as anti-lockdown but then branched out into culture war outrage farming and omni-contrarianism.
It's still edited by a member of anti-vax misinformation group HART, who laundered their work through the site.