Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced a new goal of reaching 100,000 tests for coronavirus per day by the end of April.

Speaking at a Downing Street press briefing, he said the new national effort for testing will ensure that we can get ‘tests for everyone who needs them’.

‘I’m delighted that the pharmaceutical industry is rising to this challenge and putting unprecedented resources into testing’ he said.

‘Taken together, I am now setting the goal of 100,000 tests per day by the end of this month.That is the goal and I’m determined that we will get there.’

Mr Hancock said the tests could include antibody tests that use blood to indicate if someone has previously had the virus and could now be immune.

However, those will not be rolled out to the public unless they pass sufficient tests to prove they are accurate.

‘No test is better than a bad test’, he said.

The priority will be antigen tests, which detect the presence or absence of Covid-19.

Patients will be prioritised first, followed by NHS staff in critical care and other key workers before eventually making them available to the public.

The government has faced criticism for its testing policy, with the UK only just reaching a target of 10,000 per day, compared to 70,000 in Germany.

Explaining why the UK has failed to get up to speed, the health secretary said the country ‘did not start the crisis with a large diagnosis industry’, but added ‘that doesn’t mean we can’t build one’.

He said: ‘Just as our top-end manufacturers have joined up the national effort to build ventilators, pharmaceutical companies will do the same for testing.

‘Our pharmaceutical giants like AstraZeneca and GSK, which have no great history in diagnostics, are now working with our world-leading but small diagnostics companies to build a British diagnostics industry at scale. ‘

Mr Hancock, who has come out of self-isolation after testing positive for Covid-19 last week, said a country-wide shortage of swabs had been ‘resolved’ but that there remained a ‘global challenge’ around sourcing the reagent chemicals needed for the tests.

The target of 100,000 will be achieved through a ‘five pillar’ plan.

• The five pillars are:
• Swab testing in Public Health England and NHS labs;
• Using commercial partners, including universities and private businesses, to establish more swab testing;
• Introducing antibody blood tests to determine whether people have had Covid-19;
• Surveillance to determine the rate of infection and how it is spreading across the country;
• Build an ‘at-scale’ diagnostics industry to reach 100,000 tests by end of April.

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