Thread by @_johnbye

The government claims to have hit its target of expanding lab capacity to 500,000 "virus" tests a day.

As with their 100,000 tests a day target in April though, there's been a rather suspicious last minute surge to reach the target which, just a week ago, looked hopeless.

Back in April the government pulled this off by counting 40,000 tests they'd put in the post as "done", even though they hadn't been used and actually processed in a lab yet.

In fact, we now know they didn't really hit 100,000 tests a day until May 20th.

https://twitter.com/_johnbye/status/1257078725025423360?s=20

The latest surge comes almost entirely from Pillar 1 (NHS and PHE) lab capacity.

This hasn't increased AT ALL for 4 months, but now we're expected to believe it suddenly doubled in 4 days, just in time to hit an arbitrary target.

And oddly none of this capacity is being used.

The Health Service Journal reports that "new diagnostic equipment and supplies .. had gone to labs over recent weeks, and a lot of it was declared by NHS England this week, ahead of the 31 October deadline".

It's not clear if it's all really usable yet.

https://twitter.com/Davewwest/status/1321867146750758912?s=20

Some NHS lab staff have said that new kit has been delivered, but is still sitting in boxes because there aren't any engineers to install it, or they don't have enough space or staff in the lab to actually use it.

Is this being counted as "capacity" yet?

https://twitter.com/gooner62/status/1323386034227392512?s=20

Even once they're installed, they aren't necessarily adding to practical capacity. New kit needs to be validated before it's put to use, and staff trained to use it.

Then you need enough reagents and other supplies to keep it running.

https://twitter.com/KathageLFC/status/1321872063007776768?s=20

All of this is taking its toll on NHS lab staff, who were already working flat out to keep up with demand for testing.

https://twitter.com/abisal1/status/1321876233727184899?s=20

Some are reporting having to get multiple new testing platforms up and running to boost capacity far beyond original plans, while struggling to get enough supplies to keep their existing kit running.

https://twitter.com/C1are5/status/1321880283063476225?s=20

And this seems to be making things worse rather than better, with reports that turn around times for tests in NHS labs (which have always been much faster than Pillar 2 labs) may be suffering.

If so, this will show up in the Test & Trace reports soon.

https://twitter.com/KathageLFC/status/1321877291547459584?s=20

What makes this worse is that the added pressure on the NHS (which is adding far more lab capacity than originally expected) may be because of failures in the Lighthouse Lab system, where new labs all seem to be running two months behind schedule.

https://twitter.com/_johnbye/status/1314888413896740865?s=20

The real test will be whether this level of lab capacity is sustained in the coming weeks, and whether the actual number of tests being processed matches it.

At the moment though most of the new capacity seems to be theoretical, with little increase in actual testing so far.