Covid-19: Testing

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, I pay tribute to Public Health England, which stood up the CTAS system that provided track and trace services at the beginning of the epidemic. I pay tribute to Dido Harding, the track and trace director whose appointment was announced earlier this week. I pay tribute to Professor John Newton, who provides scientific guidance and co-ordination for the track and trace programme.

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, we have seen from the Covid outbreak at a nightclub in South Korea that speed is of the essence in ensuring an effective test, trace and isolate strategy. However, given the limited availability of test kits and the fact that it can take three to four days to process them, and in the light of the fact that what the Government called “operational issues” led last week to 50,000 tests being sent for analysis to the US, can we really be confident that the tests can produce sufficiently timely information to form the basis for a test, trace and isolate strategy?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord is entirely right. Speed is essential and the South Korea example is a good one. More than half of our tests are turned around within 24 hours. I pay tribute to the track and trace team, who handled an extremely complex and difficult laboratory failure last weekend and used innovation to turn around 50,000 tests, the results of which were reliably given to people. However, we will continue to work on shortening the result times and getting the information back speedily so that isolation can happen in a thorough way.