Coronavirus UK: Matt Hancock accused of test number ‘fiddle’

5.5k

View
comments

Matt Hancock was tonight accused of blatantly fiddling the figures to hit his much-vaunted target for 100,000 coronavirus tests in a day. 

The Health Secretary faced claims he used postal tests yet to be completed and multiple checks on the same people to hit his six-figure milestone.

He used an appearance at the Downing Street briefing this evening to bullishly claim success after setting the significant target a month ago, when tests were running at just 10,000 a day.

Appearing live on television tonight he emotionally told the watching nation there were 122,347 tests in the 24 hours to 9am, branding it an ‘incredible achievement’ for the whole medical and scientific community.

But he faced a wave of condemnation as it became clear that the number appeared to only tell half the story. 

Figures posted online by the Government itself show that his questionable calculation included tens of thousands of tests kits that have been sent out to homes and hospitals – even though they have yet to be used, returned and processed. 

The head of the testing programme, Professor John Newton, confirmed tonight that around 40,000 of the total were kits that have been mailed out – suggesting 100,000 tests have not in fact been completed. 

In addition to this, just 73,191 people were tested, some more than once. They include brave medical staff who are often tested multiple times per day as they work in high-risk settings to save as many lives as possible.  Others are tested more than once to avoid false negative tests.

Mr Hancock dodged questions about whether the figures had been cooked this evening, saying the allegation was ‘not something I recognise’.  

But Boris Johnson told the Downing Street briefing last night that the figures covered tests ‘carried out’, rather than merely posted. 

A tweet sent from the No10 account earlier this month stated: ‘We’ll test 100,000 people a day by the end of this month.’ 

It prompted Labour to accuse ministers of ‘moving the goalposts to hit their own arbitrary target’, and the Lib Dems to claim they acted to ‘massage the metrics rather than admit they fell short’.  

On another rollercoaster day of coronavirus developments: 

• The UK has today announced 739 more coronavirus deaths, taking Britain’s official fatality toll to 27,180. 
• A top midwife has warned coronavirus could lead to a surge in baby deaths because women enduring a difficult pregnancy are afraid to go to hospitals; 
• Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has accused Mr Johnson of being ‘slow at every turn’ in the response to the crisis and demanded an exit strategy from lockdown as soon as possible; 
• Experts said it was ‘perfectly reasonable’ for the UK to start easing lockdown before a contact tracing regime is fully in place’; 
• Ryanair has announced 3,000 job cuts as it revealed it expects to operate under 1 per cent of its schedule between April and June; 
• Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye has warned that social distancing at airports is ‘physically impossible’; 
• The ONS has published local breakdowns of coronavirus-related deaths suggesting deprived areas with high BAME populations are most at risk.

When Mr Hancock set the target he said he wanted 100,000 tests per day – but the number of people checked has always been significantly lower.

A jubilant Mr Hancock said tonight: ‘I can announce that we have met our goal… Setting stretching, ambitious goals in a crisis has a galvanising effect on everybody involved. It is a mission.’  

But it came after a source told the Health Service Journal that Mr Hancock was ‘obsessed’ with reaching the target – which has been dismissed as a PR stunt by some experts. 

‘They are trying every trick in the book,’ the source said. ‘They had to get the permanent secretary (Chris Wormald) to agree to a change in the counting process.

‘We’re now counting a home test as tests which have been sent to people’s homes.’

The DoH denied that there had been any change to the counting rules.

Notes added to the DoH testing website yesterday state that the number of tests includes ‘tests processed through our labs’, but also ‘tests sent to individuals at home or to satellite testing locations’. 

The position seems to contrast with the PM’s words at the briefing last night, when he gave information about tests that have been ‘carried out’. 

Mr Johnson said: ‘901,905 tests for coronavirus have now been carried out in the UK, including 81,611 tests yesterday.’ 

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: ‘Labour has repeatedly called for more testing, and increasing testing is an important milestone. 

‘But many would have expected the 100,000 promise to have been met by actually carrying out testing, not simply because 39,000 kits had been mailed out. 

‘Tonight’s headline figure shouldn’t count tests that hadn’t been used, or indeed, might never be used as a completed test. Ministers promised transparency – the public and NHS staff deserve clarity. 

‘In any event, this figure was never a strategy. We need a fully resourced testing, isolation and tracing programme and ministers should be using this lockdown time to put the fundamentals of infectious disease control in place.’ 

Mr Hancock batted questions about the breakdown of the testing numbers across to the scientists at the briefing tonight. 

He said: ‘We set out on gov.uk exactly how we count the different types of tests for different reasons because obviously… home tests are produced in a different way to the tests at drive-through centres.’ 

Asked by Mr Hancock to respond, Prof Newton said tests were counted when they ‘go outside of the the control of the programme’ by being mailed out.

Despite the notes being updated on the DoH website only yesterday, Prof Newton said: ‘There has been no change to the way that tests are counted. As we’ve developed new ways of delivering tests we’ve taken advice from officials as to how this should be counted.

‘So, the tests that are within the control of the programme, which is the great majority, are counted when the tests are undertaken in our laboratories.

‘But any test which goes outside the control of the programme, they’re counted when they leave the programme, so that is the tests that are mailed out to people at home and the tests which go out in the satellite.

‘So that is the way they are counted, have always been counted, and the way we were advised to count them by officials.’

Brushing away the doubts, Mr Hancock heralded the expansion in testing beyond 100,000 a day as an ‘incredible achievement’.

He said: ‘I knew that it was an audacious goal, but we needed an audacious goal, because testing is so important for getting Britain back on her feet… 

‘This unprecedented expansion in British testing capability is an incredible achievement, but it is not my achievement, it is a national achievement.’ 

He said the testing capacity built would ‘help every single person in this country’ and would ‘help us to unlock the lockdown’. 

Mr Hancock said the next phase will allow the Government ‘to reassert, as much as is safely possible, the liberty of us all’.

Mr Hancock said: ‘In recent weeks we’ve had to impinge on historic liberties to protect our NHS and our loved ones and yet our goal must be freedom. Freedom from the virus, yes, and we will not lift measures until it is safe to do so.

‘But also we care about the restoration of social freedom and economic freedom too – each citizen’s right to do as they please.

‘For now, we’re working together to stay home, we’re impinging on the freedom of all for the safety of all.

‘With this next mission of test, track and trace, I’m seeking a solution that allows us, by each of us participating, to target the measures that are needed with much more precision and so to reassert, as much as is safely possible, the liberty of us all.

‘That is our next mission. But for now the most important thing for everyone to do to keep R down and to get us all through is to retain the spirit and resolve that has had such an impact thus far.’  

Earlier, Health Select Committee chair Jeremy Hunt, one of the foremost critics of the testing regime, said Mr Hancock deserved credit for the ‘enormous achievement’.

However, Mr Hunt, a former health secretary himself, insisted it is now crucial to use the capacity to introduce South Korea-style mass screening. 

He said that would enable the lockdown to be ‘targeted’ on those who are infected rather than crippling the whole UK economy. 

The government is setting another target for having full-scale contact tracing in place by the end of the month – although previously ministers had indicated the hoped it would up and running by mid-May. 

Labour leader Keir Starmer has added to the pressure by demanding a timetable for reaching Boris Johnson’s ambition of 250,000 tests a day, saying the UK also needs 50,000 contact tracers. 

In an interview with the Evening Standard, Sir Keir said the government had been ‘slow at every turn’. ‘Almost every country that has managed to get to the next stage has had testing and tracing as part of the strategy. The UK needs to do that too,’ he said.

‘That means hitting the 100,000 tests a day target, but then going further. The Prime Minister previously promised 250,000 tests a day. The Government’s advisers will know whether that is precisely the right target. But I do believe the Government should recommit to such an ambition.’ 

Earlier, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist branded the Government’s target a ‘PR stunt’, saying the number had only been chosen because it ‘sounds good’. 

Sir Paul Nurse, chief executive of biomedical research centre the Francis Crick Institute, said on Question Time that the increase was welcome but the figure itself ‘makes absolutely no sense’. 

Figures published last night showed 81,611 tests were conducted on Wednesday, a major jump from 52,429 on Tuesday and 43,453 on Monday.

The significant jump gave renewed hope that Mr Hancock could possibly scrape past his self-imposed target, announced on April 2 when figures were running at around 10,000 a day.

In the event he announced tonight that it had been comfortably cleared – albeit with many of the tests seemingly not having been ‘carried out’. 

Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I think more than a pat on the back, it is an enormous achievement… it is an absolutely huge transformation of our testing capacity and Matt Hancock deserves enormous credit. 

‘Of course 100,000 is in some ways an arbitrary number but setting a target like that is how you get things done in a big bureaucracy like the NHS – it galvanises the system, It looks like that is what he’s done.’ 

He added: ‘The first thing they do which we now will be able to do at the right moment is be able to test not just for coronavirus cases in hospitals and care homes, but actually when people start going back to work to test them in the community.’

Mr Hunt went on: ‘That has meant that they are able to stop the virus in its track, so it’s much more targeted.

‘It’s locking down the people who have the virus or might have the virus, but not locking down the whole economy.’

David Nabarro, the World Health Organisation’s special envoy on Covid-19, said it would be ‘perfectly reasonable’ for the UK to start easing the lockdown before a full contact tracing system is up and running.  

‘Every government is having to make a choice and I understand that the contact tracing process is now well advanced and so that’s a reasonable time to be thinking through how lockdown can be eased, and it won’t be eased all at once, it will be eased bit by bit,’ he told Today.

He added: ‘You don’t need to have 100 per cent contact tracing in order to get the R-number down. The contact tracing is an absolutely essential part of reducing transmission, and getting that capacity as widely spread as possible is key to getting the transmission as low as you can.

‘But you certainly can release the lockdown while you’re building up the case finding and contact tracing capacity – that’s what most other countries are doing.

‘They don’t wait until everything is ready and so it’s perfectly reasonable for Britain to be thinking through these options and working our how it’s going to do the next steps.’

Sir Paul said lives had been put at risk because NHS frontline workers were treating patients without being tested.  

‘The 100,000 target is just a figure with a lot of noughts in it. It was a bit of a PR stunt, which has gone a bit wrong. Why 100,000? Where was the strategy? It just sounded good,’ Sir Paul said. 

‘The reality is… If we had had local testing connected to hospitals, we could have made hospitals a safe place. But what we had was the potential for care workers on the words, working with sick patients, who were carrying the disease and weren’t being tested. 

‘They didn’t make the decision we want to test everybody who is a frontline worker and wouldn’t test anybody who had no symptoms. We know you can be infected but have no symptoms. This makes absolutely no sense. Testing was absolutely critical. It hasn’t been handled properly’.

‘Even if we don’t hit it, and it’s probable that we won’t, we will in the next few days hit that target,’ Mr Buckland told Sky News.

‘I think it was right to set an ambitious target.

‘And you know, sometimes even if you don’t hit the target on the due date the direction of travel is the most im-portant thing.

‘I believe we’re going to get there and then move beyond it, because we need more.’

The number of tests completed was massively boosted by the expansion of eligibility to all key workers with coro-navirus symptoms last week and then again to all over-65s this Tuesday.

Previously only NHS and care staff and those sick in hospital had been eligible for tests.

The Department of Health carried out a major publicity drive on social media this week in a bid to get people to take up the offer of tests, which are available either delivered to homes or at drive-in centres.

Mr Hancock is said to have told his team this week that they had achieved their aims – even if they miss the target.

In a speech to civil servants this week, reported by Buzzfeed News, he said: ‘Whatever happens tomorrow, we’ve done what we needed to do – we’ve ramped up our testing capacity more than anyone believed we could, and given the UK the testing capacity it needs to beat this virus.’

Experts believe the huge expansion in testing is key to getting the country ready for a ‘contact tracing’ programme that will be key to avoiding a second wave of the virus when ministers eventually decide to lift lockdown measures.

Mr Hancock has asked that contact tracing is ready by the middle of May.

Officials are hiring 18,000 call centre staff to run the programme – which will trace every person exposed to the vi-rus over the coming weeks.

But testing is essential to such a programme – because every person with symptoms will have to test positive for the virus to trigger a labour-intensive contract tracing effort.

And anyone who is found to have been exposed to the initial patient will then also be tested, which will involve even more tests.

Mr Hancock pledged at the beginning of April to test 100,000 people by the end of the month.

When he made the pledge Britain was only testing 10,000 people a day.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said yesterday: ‘You can chart the progress that we’ve made towards hit-ting that target and that we are working hard today to ensure that people who need tests get them.’

But NHS Providers, which represents hospitals and ambulance trusts in England, described the target as a ‘red herring’ which has distracted attention from failings in the long-term Covid-19 strategy.

NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson said as many as 120,000 tests would be needed daily for NHS workers once the UK comes out of lockdown, to stave off a second wave of the virus.

He said staff and patients would need to be tested regularly to control the spread of the virus once lockdown measures are eased.

With 800,000 people working for the NHS, Mr Hopson said there would need to be between 110,00 and 120,000 tests a day for them to be tested once a week.

He pointed to mass testing capabilities in Germany and South Korea, saying: ‘If you look at the international expe-rience, having the right testing regime is absolutely crucial in conquering this virus.

‘We are in a new phase, we are about to try and exit lockdown. If we are going to control the spread of the virus it’s really important we test all staff and patients regularly in healthcare settings.

‘What we are missing is we haven’t got the strategy in terms of what the next phase looks like.’

 

How many people have died of coronavirus in your area? Interactive map reveals fatalities by postcode – and reveals deaths are TWICE as high in poor areas of England and Wales 

An interactive map which reveals coronavirus deaths by postcode shows that people living in the poorest parts of England and Wales are dying at more than double the rate of those in affluent areas. 

The map, included in the latest Office for National Statistics report, found that the most deprived regions suffered 55 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 25 fatalities in the wealthiest areas.

The report analysed 20,283 virus deaths registered in England and Wales from March 1 to April 17, which means it is two weeks out of date and thousands of fatalities have not been included.

London – the epicentre of Britain’s outbreak – had the highest mortality rate, with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people – more than double the national average of 36.2 fatalities. One in four of all coronavirus victims live in the capital.

The London boroughs of Newham, Brent and Hackney were the three worst-hit regions in all of the country, suffering 144, 142 and 127 deaths per 100,000, respectively. 

Boroughs in the capital accounted for all of the top ten local authorities with the highest COVID-19 death rates, the report showed.

Hastings, in affluent East Sussex, and Norwich had the lowest COVID-19 death rates – suffering six and five deaths per 100,000, respectively. 

Charities said today the news that the poorest in society were being hit the hardest by the crisis was ‘worrying, but unfortunately not surprising’. 

Ethnic minority groups – who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 – make up the majority of residents in Newham (71 per cent) and Brent (64 per cent).  

Whereas the overwhelming majority of residents in Hastings and Norwich are white, with just 9 per cent and 6 per cent coming from minority backgrounds.

A separate report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) released today found black and Asian Britons are two-and-a-half times more likely to die from COVID-19 than whites.  

The interactive map breaks down the number of COVID-19 deaths by so-called ‘Middle Layer Super Output Areas’ (MSOAs) which have an average population of 7,500. The ONS uses MSOAs to get a more accurate local breakdown of statistics. Some MSOAs may include more than one postcode

A second interactive map breaks down the number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people for every local authority in England and Wales

Read more: