I am a swab tester in the UK – but we have barely any swabs to test
While Germany and South Korea have tested in huge numbers, the response here is hampered by lack of political will
When health secretary Matt Hancock visited our Milton Keynes laboratory last Thursday, he avowed that our jobs were crucial, and thanked us for our service. Our workplace, where we test patient samples for the virus, has been called the “
biggest diagnostic lab network in British history”, with capacity to process more than 5,000 swabs, eventually projected to reach 30,000 swabs per day. And yet at our testing centre on Tuesday this week, we processed just over 1,000 samples. The day before, the total was 1,300, and three days ago 1,800.
We are all being let down by a government that may have decided testing is, after all, not that important, despite the successful examples set by South Korea and Germany. On 12 April, the United States performed 140,000 tests. Italy more than 48,000. Turkey 35,000. Germany is averaging 50,000 a day. In the UK, total tests numbered just short of
16,000on Tuesday. Just in our lab, we could have easily done 8,000. We are ready; why aren’t we being sent more swabs?