LONDON 3 Apr (ANA) - Matt Hancock was grilled this morning over his pledge to boost the UK's coronavirus testing capacity to 100,000 by the end of the month after he admitted the government is yet to find a 'reliable' antibody test which would enable people to go back to work. 

The UK Health Secretary yesterday vowed to dramatically ramp up the number of tests being carried out amid a fierce backlash over the government's lacklustre efforts so far.

He said he wanted testing to hit six figures by the end of April and suggested that would be achieved through a mix of antigen tests which use a swab and show if someone currently has the disease and antibody tests which can be done at home and show if someone has had it already and has some degree of immunity.

But there are major questions over how the government will hit the target after Mr Hancock said ministers still have not found an at-home antibody test that works. 

He then appeared to plunge the strategy into confusion by saying antibody tests will not be relied on to hit the 100,000 figure, raising concerns about the feasibility of only using the more labour intensive antigen tests. 

The government yesterday performed a screeching U-turn on its testing policy as it abandoned the previous centralised approach and finally invited the wider science and medical research sectors to help, with private labs now joining the effort to process tests. 

But the government continues to face intense criticism with its opponents arguing that testing capacity should have been ramped up as soon as coronavirus emerged as a global threat. 

The UK's testing capacity lags far behind that of Germany where 500,000 people are being tested every week and today it emerged that NHS staff swabs are being sent to the UK's European neighbour because the results come back quicker than they do from British labs. 

Scrutiny of the approach taken in Whitehall has only increased after it was claimed that public health planners tasked with preparing the UK for a global health crisis ignored warnings from the World Health Organisation to prepare a mass testing programme.

Officials 'did not discuss' implementing such a programme because they assumed that a new strain of influenza was the most likely threat and testing in that scenario is 'not important', according to the Telegraph. The decision appears to contradict guidance on bird flu issued to countries by the World Health Organisation in 2005.

Public Health England is believed to be assessing as many as 150 different antibody test kits, with the devices viewed as the key to getting the UK out of lockdown because identifying people who have had the disease and who now have resistance to it would enable them to go back to work, gradually restarting the creaking UK economy.

Increasing antigen testing is also viewed as crucial because it would allow officials to test more self-isolating health workers and to say for certain whether they have the disease, allowing those who do not to return to the NHS frontline.  

Manufacturers of antibody tests who have sent them to Public Health England for assessment today said there was still no clarity on whether their kits were going to be used despite some claiming their devices are 98 per cent accurate. An Essex-based maker of DIY kits claimed officials won't even look at its product because it is a self-test, as opposed to one used by medics.(ANA)

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