UK's Johnson under fire for low number of COVID-19 tests

LONDON (AP) — When Prime Minister Boris Johnson developed a cough and fever, he got a test for the new coronavirus. Most other Britons won’t be offered one.

Johnson’s Conservative government was under fire Wednesday for failing to keep its promise to increase the amount of testing being done for COVID-19, even as the country saw its biggest rise yet in deaths among people with the virus, to 2,352.

The issue has become an incipient political crisis for Johnson, who has mild symptoms and is working from isolation in the prime minister’s Downing Street apartment.

Richard Horton, editor of medical journal The Lancet, said Britain’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis was “the most serious science policy failure in a generation.”

In a tweet, he noted that England’s deputy chief medical officer said last week that “’there comes a point in a pandemic where that (testing) is not an appropriate intervention.”

“Now (testing is) a priority,” Horton said. "Public message: utter confusion.”

Like some other countries, the U.K. has restricted testing to hospitalized patients, leaving people with milder symptoms unsure whether they have had the virus. Many scientists say wider testing -- especially of health care staff -- would allow medics who are off work with symptoms to return if they are negative, and would give a better picture of how the virus spreads.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick conceded Wednesday that “we do need to go further and we need to do that faster.”

The U.K. initially performed about 5,000 tests a day, but the government promised to increase that number to 10,000 by the end of last week and to 25,000 by mid-April. The target has not been met, with 8,630 tests carried out Monday, the last day for which figures are available.

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