Failure to step up Covid testing capacity in England left care homes exposed

While tests existed, scientists couldn’t track size of outbreak, leaving vulnerable people unprotected

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In the early days of the pandemic, ministers believed and told the public the UK was at the forefront of Covid testing. The government’s scientific advisers appeared to share the view and were perhaps even a factor in its widespread belief. At the first Sage meeting in January 2020, the assembled experts said a Covid test would be ready within days and that it could be “scalable across the UK in weeks”.

That assessment was way off the mark. The UK was indeed one of the first countries to develop a Covid test, but it squandered the advantage by failing to deliver them. The inability to ramp up testing capacity had serious knock-on effects. Scientists had no clear picture of the size of the outbreak, while prioritisation of what tests existed left many vulnerable people, including those in care homes, dangerously exposed.