Britain is aiming to increase the number of tests for coronavirus to 25,000 a day by the middle of the month from its present capacity of 12,750 a day, housing minister Robert Jenrick told Sky News on Wednesday.
Britain is beginning to test medical staff in additional to patients in hospital, but critics have said it is not expanding testing fast enough or wide enough.
Jenrick said 8,240 individuals were tested on Monday and more than 900 health workers were tested over the weekend.
“We now have capacity to test 12,750 people every day, we were focusing the capacity that we had on people in critical conditions, which was on medical advice,” he said.
“We think within days we will be able to go from our present capacity of 12,750 to 15,000, so that’s a significant increase but still not as far as we’d like it to be, then mid-April is when we expect to be at 25,000.”
The number of deaths from coronavirus in the UK rose by 27% in the space of a day, according to new figures on Tuesday.
The government said 1,789 people have died in hospitals from coronavirus as of 1600 GMT on Monday, an increase of 381 from Sunday, the largest rise in absolute terms yet.
“The increase in the number of deaths is deeply shocking, disturbing (and) moving,” Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said at a news conference, adding that it was not possible to predict when fatalities would peak.
“It depends on the actions of all of us,” he added. “We can delay that peak, we can flatten the curve through our own particular actions.”
Later on Tuesday, a London hospital announced that a 13-year-old boy had died after contracting coronavirus, Britain‘s youngest fatality from the pandemic.
Britain initially took a gradual approach to containing the virus compared with European countries such as Italy.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed stringent controls after projections showed a quarter of a million people could die. Johnson has since become the first leader of a major power to announce a positive test result for coronavirus.
Britain lags Italy, Spain and France in terms of the number of deaths, but they are still doubling around every 3.5 days.
While that is similar to the trajectory of Italy – the world’s worst-hit country – when it was reporting similar numbers of deaths just over two weeks ago, British officials said on Tuesday they saw tentative reasons for optimism.
Official figures showed confirmed cases rose 14% between Monday and Tuesday to 25,150 as of Tuesday at 0800 GMT, the third day of increases around that rate – slowing from around 22-24% last Thursday and Friday.
“We’re not out of the woods, we’re very much in the woods, and it’s really important that we keep complying with those instructions,” said Stephen Powis, director of the National Health Service in England.
“But as you can see, the number of infections is not rising as rapidly as it was. So, green shoots, but only green shoots, and we must not be complacent and we must not take our foot off the pedal.”
The government also announced the first medical ventilators which Britain has recently ordered from businesses will be ready this weekend and available to the health service next week.
