UK may miss 100,000 test target – Cabinet Minister

The UK may not reach its target of conducting 100,000 tests a day by the end of April, a cabinet minister has suggested.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock set the target earlier this month but latest figures show only 52,429 tests were carried out on Tuesday.

Justice Secretary Robert Buckland was asked about the likelihood of reaching the target by the BBC a little earlier.

“Even if it isn’t met, we are well on our way to ramping this up,” he said. “One hundred thousand is an important milestone, yes, but frankly we need more.”

He added: “Yes, 52,000 isn’t 100,000, I know that… but we are straining every sinew to get there.”

NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and National Health Service trusts in England, has dismissed the 100,000 target as a “red herring” which risks preventing the development of a “proper, next stage testing strategy”.

Buckland said drive-in test centres, mobile units and home testing would “get us to the position we need to be in” but there was “much more work to be done”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has previously suggested a target of 250,000 tests a day.

-BBC

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ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

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An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.

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