UK Edition
British firm that can deliver 1m coronavirus tests per week left waiting for Public Health England order
Test is already being used in Germany, but PHE laboratory has not sent for a sample
One million coronavirus tests a week can be delivered by a British company, but Public Health England (PHE) has not taken up the offer, it has emerged, amid growing concerns that the Government’s 100,000-a-day target is now unreachable.
Berkshire-based Apacor Ltd has already gained approval from the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to supply coronavirus antigen tests and said the first 150,000 could be delivered overnight.
The South Korean test, made by Wells Bio, is already being used by Germany, but the PHE laboratory at Colindale has still not sent for a sample so it can be verified and has said it cannot find time to talk to the company until next week.
Anthony Bellm, the Managing Director of Apacor, said: "We have been waiting for Colindale for two weeks, and it's frustrating because this supplier isn’t some small unknown company. This is the largest manufacturer of some types of tests in the world, and they can do one million tests a week.
"So we're just waiting. We are ready and able to help. We could do 150,000 tomorrow and they're just sitting there in a warehouse, ready."
To date, the Government has managed just 15,994 tests a day, despite setting an earlier target, on March 18, of 25,000 by the middle of this month. On Wednesday, it missed the target.
At Wednesday's briefing Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, denied that target had ever been set and caused confusion by suggesting there was spare capacity due to a lack of demand over the weekend, even though care homes wrote to the health minister on Friday to plead for tests.
On April 2, Mr Hancock announced a "five-pillar" strategy, promising to massively ramp up testing to 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month. But analysis by The Telegraph's data team shows that the target is highly unlikely to get beyond 20,000 a day.
Last week Sir Paul Nurse, the director of the Francis Crick Institute which is helping process NHS tests, also warned that achieving the target would be difficult.
Other private companies have voiced frustration that offers of help have been ignored by the Government.
Alan Thornhill, the UK country manager of genetics firm Igenomix, based in Surrey, told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he had a highly trained team and an accredited diagnostic lab "ready and willing", but had had little response despite from the NHS, PHE and the Department of Health.
"I've made many calls, many emails, we're ready to help," he said. "I understand this thing about you've got to offer a good test, and a bad test is worse than no test at all, but the tests we were planning to offer are exactly the same one that the NHS and Public Health England are using.
"It's all very chaotic, and the truth is everybody wants to help, and they're using all their ingenuity to help, their phone is on 24/7, but we're just not being called."
Private companies also say PHE refused to provide them with positive samples from coronavirus patients so they can validate their own tests.
One well-known medic told The Telegraph: "We keep being rebuffed from Public Health England, even though they talk about wanting Dunkirk companies to help them. It was impossible to get hold of anyone at Colindale over Easter. Did they think they could shut for the holidays? Because the virus hasn’t got that memo."
Last week, Mr Hancock also called on the biotech industry to come up with a solution to the antibody testing kits after tests bought by the Government were found to be unreliable.
Ancon Medical, a diagnostic specialist based in Canterbury, has said it can provide a test which gives a positive result in just 10 minutes but has had no response from the Government.
Wesley Baker, CEO of Ancon, said if the firm had been granted access to intensive care facilities when they first asked it would now be capable of screening the whole country, adding: "We are incredibly disappointed and frustrated with the lack of any response or acknowledgement from the Department of Health or Public Health England thus far.
"We have made multiple attempts to highlight the potential our technology has in providing effective screening and diagnosis at a rapid rate and on a large scale, with no response.
"If we had access to ICU facilities dealing with Covid-19 patients for between one to four weeks to be able to build a Covid-19 chemical breath profile, we could now have been discussing the mass screening of the population."
The World Health Organisation has increasingly called on governments to "test, test, test", but Britain has consistently lagged behind countries like Germany.
Apacor also can source large numbers of antibody tests from the US from the same supplier used by the US government. But time is running out and the company fears that, if Britain does not get orders in soon, "we will end up at the back of the queue".
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "The Government is working in partnership with companies and organisations across the public and private sectors to scale up testing and tackle coronavirus.
"We welcome all of offers of support, and that is why we have set up a clear and easy process by which these can be made and carefully considered. We have had more than 5,000 offers of help, and we are endeavouring to respond as quickly as possible."