UK must process tens of thousands more coronavirus tests to end the lockdown, former World Health Organisation director says

The UK must use its capacity to process tens of thousands more tests before ending the lockdown, a former World Health Organisation (WHO) director has said.

Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London (UCL) criticised current efforts and said mass testing is the key to lifting sanctions for the nation.

His comments come as politicians face backlash after Public Health England (PHE) said fewer than 10,000 tests are being carried out each day.

In comparison, Germany is managing to get through an average of 70,000 every 24 hours.

PHE has said previously that it is not necessary to test all suspected cases in the community and the procedure has largely been focused on hospital patients in the UK.

But, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Prof Costello said a policy of mass community testing was essential to detect hotspots and eventually end the lockdown.

“When we want to loosen up the lockdown, we want to have the control over that,” he said.

“By mass testing, we will be able to detect new outbreaks and there will be much less disruption if we can do that rather than isolating the whole economy.”

He said the UK has the means to get through thousands more tests and said there are 44 molecular virology labs in the UK alone.

“If they were doing 400 tests a day, we would be up to Germany levels of testing and that is perfectly feasible,” he added.

“PHE were slow and controlled and only allowed non-PHE labs to start testing two weeks ago, but that was after the strategy shift to end community tests.”

He said the UK needed to be more like South Korea and added: “They have done 490,000 tests. Their death rate is three per million and they have suppressed the virus.”

Asked whether the UK had the capacity, he said: “I don’t see why we can’t get these 44 labs up and running, finding cases and testing.

“We must go to mass testing and when we remove the lockdown – I don’t think it will take six months, in all the Asian states it was six to eight weeks, even in Wuhan – then we will have a control mechanism which will enable us to wait, without socially distancing the whole country, and wait until we can get drugs or a vaccine for herd immunity.

“We do need a national lockdown for now but we want to get that lifted as soon as we can. Mass testing will be a way to do that.”