Government ‘absolutely’ stands by 100,000 coronavirus testing target by end of April - a day after only 19,000 carried out

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Louise Thomas

Editor

Boris Johnson’s official spokesman has said the prime minister has “full confidence” in Matt Hancock, and insisted Downing Street “absolutely” stands by the health secretary’s target of 100,000 daily tests for coronavirus by the end of April.

The comment came as the latest figures then available showed that 19,316 tests were conducted in the 24 hours up to 9am on Monday, with nine days left to Mr Hancock’s deadline.

And later figures for the following 24 hours showed that testing dipped to just 18,206 people on Monday, bringing to total number of tests carried out over the course of the outbreak to 535,342.

A report in The Telegraph today suggested that Whitehall figures were distancing themselves from the target, quoting Downing Street sources as describing it as “arbitrary and irrational”.

But Mr Johnson’s spokesman dismissed the claim as “wrong”, claiming that the unnamed insider quoted “could be anyone”.

“We are absolutely standing by the target,” said the PM’s spokesman. “We have said throughout that that is a government target and we are working hard to hit it.”

The Telegraph quoted an “insider close to Downing Street” as saying that the 100,000 target had been devised by Hancock to buy time in response to media pressure and might “come back to bite him”.

The unnamed source said: “He’s not had a good crisis. The prime minister will say he has confidence in him but it doesn’t feel like that.”

Referring to the source, Mr Johnson’s spokesman said: “Whoever they are – and it could be anyone given that description – they are wrong.”

Asked whether Mr Hancock enjoyed Mr Johnson’s full confidence, the PM’s spokesman replied: “Yes.”

Some 13,460 of Sunday’s tests were conducted at Public Health England, NHS and devolved administration labs and 5,856 at the network of 27 new commercially operated drive-through centres. The drive-through network is due to be expanded to 50 by 30 April in the push to meet Mr Hancock’s target.

But the number of tests completed fell well short of the 39,250 daily capacity available, despite the government extending eligibility beyond NHS staff and care home workers and their relatives to also include firefighters and other essential workers.

In all, 97,063 health and care workers and family members had been tested by Monday morning to see if they could return to work after self-isolating.

NHS staff absence rates in England are down “significantly” since the start of the month to 4.3 per cent of doctors and 8.3 per cent of nurses, said Downing Street.

The PM’s spokesman declined to say whether eligibility for tests could be expanded to include people like supermarket workers or bus drivers in order to ensure capacity is used to the full.

“We have always said that as capacity increases we will be able to widen the number of eligible groups in the programme,” he said.