Recommendation 167

SAGE minutes from 28 January 2020 recorded that notwithstanding the scientific lead in establishing a test, PHE only had operational capacity to administer “400 to 500 tests per day” for the whole country.248 Other countries such as South Korea and Hong Kong, who did not benefit from our lead in producing a test, nevertheless rapidly developed a testing capacity to allow a comprehensive testing programme to be put in place during the early weeks of the pandemic.249 By contrast, during the whole, crucial, period between 25 January and 11 March 2020, in which the virus was spreading across the whole country, only 27,476 coronavirus tests were performed in the UK.250 To put this in context, that is less than one test a day for each parliamentary constituency.