@notevenat20
No, you can’t. But as people can’t get tests it would give a secondary method of showing how many people are trying to get tests and where in the country they live.
There are over 200,000 tests being carried out every day we are told. So although it seems lots of people can't get tests, there must also be lots of people who can get tests.
The problem is as follows:
I think the NW had 30% of the positive tests yesterday. But it has 15% of the testing capacity.
So once all the home postal kits for the day have gone out, that leaves people in certain areas scrambling around trying to find tests at a testing centre.
Which is fine if you have a car and money for petrol. Not so fine if you don't.
It also helps if you have sufficient testing stations for the area.
Warrington is a prime example of the problem.
Its only testing station was shared with Halton. So every couple of weeks there was no testing station in the town at all. So the ONLY way to get a test was via post if you couldn't drive.
When the mobile testing centre was in town it was located in the poorest part of town - Orford. Thats all well and good, but if you don't live in Orford and you don't drive, how do you get to it? Orford isnt the centre of town and whilst you could get a bus there you'd have to change buses.
And because the testing centre wasnt permanent theres been little awareness about it too.
Its hardly ideal for encouraging people to get tested.
As it was it appears that one of the bigger clusters has been picked up by routine hospital testing for procedures (pillar 1) rather than the community testing (pillar 2).
The whole thing points to a critical lack of basic testing in the quite period so no one took the risk seriously and a false sense of security swept through the town aided and abetted by government messaging and the local council keen to promote their shiny new multi million pound investment in the new market.
So the virus has spread unnoticed for a couple of weeks and just at the critical point where there is a problem becoming apparent locally, the national shortage hits meaning not only is there a shortage of local testing facilities but the number of postal tests available is constricted.
Its places where there is a lack of aqueduate local testing available that therefore get stung by a national shortage of home kits because these places are most reliant on being homekits when there is a sudden rise in cases. That means demand very quickly outstrips supply.
Not only this but you then get mobile people in Warrington (often worried well) able to travel to other hotspots where there are facilities but this also takes away local capacity to those who dont drive.
You therefore worsen the have and have not issue and the people least economically able to isolate are the poorest. Which adds to the problem of transmission.
I think we will look back on this and the lack of testing facilities as part of the problem.
Warrington is now saying its going to get a permanent site, but this may not be operational until next Friday. Thats another world week where there is going to be a persistent problem and with rising cases having quadrupled in a week thats more than a little bit of an issue.