Phe say no new positive results today. That's good news. Surely by this point that includes the prisoners and the uni student?
Everything I've seen about testing UK suspected cases suggests it is taking a long time to get results back. Possibly upwards of 24 hours. So, I don't think that means those two suspected cases have turned out negative yet.
That ties up with information about a lack of testing equipment, skills and labs globally to varying degrees:
www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/labs-scramble-spot-hidden-coronavirus-infections
Labs scramble to spot hidden coronavirus infections
Within days of Chinese researchers releasing the sequence of the virus on 11 January, scientists developed tests capable of detecting genetic sequences that distinguish the new agent from other coronaviruses circulating in humans. By 28 January, China’s National Medical Products Administration had approved diagnostic test kits from five companies. It was an astonishing pace for the response to a pathogen never seen before—and yet it was only a beginning.
Today, there aren’t nearly enough test kits available to keep up with the skyrocketing case numbers, and some parts of the world may lack enough trained laboratory staff to apply them. And because the genetic tests look for snippets of viral genetic material in nose and throat swabs or fluid collected from the lung, they only work when somebody has an active infection. Scientists are still scrambling to detect antibodies against the virus in the blood, which could help find people who had an infection and recovered.
Similar questions loom elsewhere. No cases have been confirmed in Africa, but there has been little testing. Initially, only two African labs were capable of detecting the virus, says John Nkengasong, who heads the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention: “If this virus had shown up in Africa in December, or early January, it would have been devastating.” The continent is better prepared since a workshop in Dakar, Senegal, last week where lab workers from 15 African countries were taught how to use one of the new viral tests, which are based on the polymerase chain reaction assay, Nkengasong says. (Another workshop will follow next week.) Given that the virus has spread so widely, however, Farrar says he would be “very surprised” if it isn’t already in Africa.
Even in the United States, test kits are in short supply. Regulations require that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supply all tests, but that agency only began to do so on 5 February and has shipped a mere 200 kits so far, each able to do at most 800 tests. U.S. officials still don’t test most people flying in from China but focus on those who have symptoms of the disease. “We’re not able to do the surveillance that we would want to do,” says Wendi Kuhnert-Tallman, who heads CDC’s laboratory task force for the virus.