Ahead of today’s Downing Street Press Conference, Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary Jonathan Ashworth MP has called on the government to outline why coronavirus testing is still not being scaled up at sufficient levels, after Health Minister Helen Whately and the Department of Health and Social Care’s own Twitter feed contradicted Michael Gove and Matt Hancock, who both claimed yesterday that the UK had already reached 10,000 coronavirus tests a day.

Speaking ahead of the Downing Street Press Conference, Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, said:

“Experts continue to call for the UK to significantly ramp up testing. When Germany is testing around 500,000 people a week, many are asking why we are still not even hitting the 10,000 a day promised on March 11th.

“We called for enforced social distancing, but it is a blunt tool without a national strategy to test and contact trace. At today’s Downing Street Press Conference we call on ministers to outline why testing is still not being scaled up at sufficient levels and what bottlenecks domestically and globally are hindering this.”