Michael Gove says 'UK must go further, faster' in rolling out coronavirus tests

Michael Gove has said the UK "must go further, faster" to increase the ability to carry out coronavirus tests.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told the Downing Street press conference on Tuesday that testing across the UK has increased, but said it needs to go further.

The Government aims to carry out 25,000 tests a day, but efforts are being hampered by a global shortage of the chemicals needed to do this.

However, Mr Gove stressed that Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock were working with companies worldwide to ensure the UK gets the material needed to increase tests “of all kind”.

He said: “More NHS staff are returning to the frontline, and more testing is taking place to help those self-isolating come back, and to protect those working so hard in our hospitals and in social care.

“But while the rate of testing is increasing, we must go further, faster.”

Some 10,767 people are currently in hospital in England, with 3,915 of those in London and 1,918 in the Midlands, where hospital admissions are accelerating.​

Mr Gove also addressed the government's efforts to produce more ventilators, telling the press conference that the UK was buying ventilators from EU nations.

“We have just over 8,000 ventilators deployed in NHS hospitals now. This number has increased since the epidemic began thanks to the hard work of NHS professionals, but we need more.

“That’s why we are buying more ventilators from abroad, including from EU nations.

“It’s also why we are developing new sources of supply at home.”

The first new ventilator devices will roll off the production line this weekend and be delivered to the NHS next week, Mr Gove said.

He said: “I can announce that this weekend the first of thousands of new ventilator devices will roll off the production line and be delivered to the NHS next week.

“From there, they will be rapidly distributed to the frontline.”

It comes as coronavirus-related deaths in the UK rose from 1,408 to 1,789, an increase of 381 on Tuesday.

This was by far the biggest day-on-day rise in the number of deaths since the outbreak began.

Mr Gove said the sharp rise in fatalities was “deeply shocking” but he could not say exactly when the peak would come.

“There’s not a fixed date like Easter when you know that the peak will come, it depends on the actions of all of us. We can delay that peak, we can flatten the curve through our own particular actions,” he told reporters.

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The cabinet minister was flanked at today's conference by NHS England's medical director Stephen Powis and deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries.

Professor Powis said the next few weeks “will be critical” to see how the UK epidemic would pan out but there were signs of a plateau in the infection rate.​

“We have had a rise in the number of new UK cases but recently there is a little bit of plateau," he said. "It’s really important not to read too much into this.

“It’s early days, we’re not out of the woods, we’re very much in the woods," he added.

“The number of infections is not rising as rapidly as it once was.

“So green shoots, but only green shoots and we must not be complacent and we must not take our foot off the pedal.”

Prof Powis said the rate of hospital admissions was still increasing, as was expected at this stage of the epidemic.

However, he said that if the number of infections started to drop, then in the next few weeks the “hope” was that the number of admissions would also begin to fall.

In the last few days, around 1,000 per day have been taken into hospital with Covid-19.