Does the government have plans to increase testing capacity?

[Fitforforty]

This morning the government are saying they are expecting up to 100,000 positive cases a day although others are predicting higher. Do they have enough testing capacity?

Our city is closing loads of test centres not increasing them.

Well a suppose that one way to put a cap on the number of positives tests.

Our local test centre has recently closed. Nice one!

The more they test, the more they'll find. What would be the point? If huge numbers of people aren't dying of it and huge numbers aren't being admitted to hospital then that's fine. They need to stop publishing figures and start protecting the hysterical. 😉

Based on the estimation of cases doubling every 9 days ( current rate of growth) we would be getting a quater of a million cases a day by the end of the month ( obviously the growth rate will slow as you run out of people to infect so that's a high estimate). In terms of testing there was another thread on difficulty getting a test that made me check availability in my area and it's not a great sign to be honest.

@Whatalottachocca

The more they test, the more they'll find. What would be the point? If huge numbers of people aren't dying of it and huge numbers aren't being admitted to hospital then that's fine. They need to stop publishing figures and start protecting the hysterical. 😉

But they are expecting an increase in hospitalization. I hope you are right and that it doesnt result in increased deaths but to just ignore it is not the best option. Even bojos somber tone implied he does not think this is over ( as much as I wish it was)

We have tests available, but it's a 70 mile round trip to the nearest testing centre! I'm sure lots of people living rurally will have this same long trek. Yes, you can get a postal test, but that adds days on to getting the results.

If positive cases are not impacting hospitalization and death, then in what way is it necessary to know how many positive cases there are?

The more they test, the more they'll find

That doesn't explain thus wave - the 7-day rolling increase in the number of tests is about 5-10%. The increase in positive cases is around 50%. The figures have been similar for 4 or more weeks.

That's a real increase, not a reflection of the amount of tests.

I think they said yesterday that it's doubling every 9 days

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

If positive cases are not impacting hospitalization and death, then in what way is it necessary to know how many positive cases there are?

So they can predict the numbers likely to need hospitalisation and plan for how many wards need to be kept for infectious disease and how many can be returned to general use

So that more can be learned about the disease, how it transmits, how well the vaccines are performing (this is a global health interests)

So that any changes can be spotted - if the disease transmission patterns are changing, is it another new variant?

And of course so that other countries can assess risk posed by travellers from UK and set rules for entry and quarantine