Coronavirus: Widespread testing when Covid-19 pandemic broke out would have had ‘benefits’, minister admits

James Brokenshire concedes people will want to know 'what lessons can be learned and what mistakes have been made'

Widespread testing for coronavirus when the pandemic broke out would have had “benefits”, a minister says, in the closest the government has come to admitting mistakes.

James Brokenshire echoed Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, in conceding the UK would have been hit less hard if testing had been ramped up at the start.

“There will be plenty of reflection and time, once we are through this terrible virus, to look at actions that have been taken, what lessons can be learned and what mistakes have been made,” the security minister said.

He also refused – three times – to say when Matt Hancock’s pledge, last month, to test all care home workers, whether they have symptoms or not, will be met.

The admission comes the day after the UK was branded “the sickest man in Europe”, when official figures suggested its Covid-19 death toll is now worse than Italy’s.

However, Mr Brokenshire blamed “capacity restraints” for the failure to boost testing before the end of April, something strongly disputed by some experts in the field.

At the end of March, Anthony Costello, a British former director of the World Health Organisation, revealed that 44 molecular virology laboratories had been left idle.

Dr Costello accused Public Health England of refusing to allow them to be used, preventing a South Korean-style test-and-tracing programme in the community.

But Mr Brokenshire told BBC Breakfast: “Ministers have previously acknowledged that having greater capacity, clearly, on testing would have had benefits.

“The challenge is that as a country, while we are amazing at so many different things – we have these world leading laboratories - overall capacity and scale is something we did not have.”

The minister argued the UK “acted very quickly”, from the base of only 2,000 daily tests at the end of February, saying: “The capacity is there to meet need – that is the important thing.

However, the health secretary has been ridiculed for claiming to have hit his target of 100,000 daily tests last week, when he included tens of thousands “in the post”.

Mr Brokenshire also defended the decision not to close UK borders to curb the virus spreading across the country, but said the move will be kept “under review”.

And he questioned Sir Patrick’s assertion, on Tuesday, that most of the coronavirus strains reaching the UK in March came from people returning from Spain and Italy.

“The scientific advice was very clear that, up to this point in time, placing restrictions at the border would not have had any significant impact on epidemic progression in the UK,” the security minister said.

On March 23, it found “the numbers coming from other countries were estimated to be insignificant compared with domestic cases, comprising around 0.5 per cent of total cases at the time”.

Mr Brokenshire said Professor Neil Ferguson's resignation, for a breach of lockdown rules involving his married lover, was a “matter of regret” but an “appropriate course” of action.