Recommendation 177

As noted earlier, the failure to have enough testing capacity in the early weeks of the pandemic contributed to a lack of knowledge as to how the infection was spreading in the country. Speaking to us in November 2020, Professor Sir Chris Ham, Chair of the Coventry and Warwickshire Sustainability and Transformation Partnership, reflected that the decision to halt test and trace in the community had been a practical decision, and that any scientific advice behind it had “not been forthcoming”: if you go back to March, we simply did not have the capacity for testing, tracing and isolating that we needed in relation to the volume of cases. […] Testing capacity had to be focused on the high priorities—staff working in health and care and patients receiving that care. It was very sad that that decision had to be taken, but it was not about science. It was about practicalities.261