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A Tory minister faced a furious TV row today over Britain's "disgraceful" failure to test more people for coronavirus.

Robert Jenrick came under heavy fire after he was sent out to defend the UK's testing rate of around 10,000 a day - despite Germany managing up to 500,000 a week.

And he admitted "we will obviously learn lessons" about which country had the right approach.

Britain ended testing for Covid-19 in the community weeks ago, focusing only on cases in hospital.

NHS staff started being tested in recent days, but capacity was still going unused. That means NHS staff with symptoms are stuck at home, not knowing if they have Covid-19.

Last night Chris Hopson of NHS Providers told Newsnight up to 85% of them would test negative and could go back to work.

Yet spare capacity was only opened up to NHS staff formally from today. And the UK's ambition to reach 25,000 tests a day overall is only by mid to late April.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove prompted a row last night after he said there was a lack of reagents for tests - only for the Chemical Industry Association to insist they were being produced.

Communities Secretary Mr Jenrick faced heavy questioning from the BBC, Sky News and ITV's Good Morning Britain over the huge gulf between the UK and other countries.

The Cabinet minister told GMB the UK tested 8,240 people on Monday, and now has capacity to test 12,750 individuals - rising to 15,000 within days.

He insisted: "Our position has been that we wanted to get as many tests as we possibly can."

But GMB's Susanna Reid, who spent two weeks in self-isolation, told him: "You are saying the same thing over and over again. We have known about this for months.

"We have been caught short and nobody understands why that is.

"When the World Health Organisation said 'test, test, test' - why didn't we get testing up and running so we could comprehensively test out in the community like they’re doing in Germany - other than we just weren’t prepared?"

GMB host Piers Morgan claimed the fact Germany was doing so many more tests than the UK was "a complete disgrace".

He asked: "Why is Germany doing 10 times as many? No government minister can give a straight answer to that very simple but very important question."

"Why is it your chances of surviving this are 10 times better in Germany right now than here because they've got the tests and we haven't, because that's what it boils down to."

Mr Jenrick said it was "not correct" that people have 10 times more chance of surviving the virus in Germany. Instead, Germany has simply tested more people with mild symptoms, meaning a smaller proportion of those tested die.

"You and I, who are not medics, should be cautious about making statements like that which are not grounded in medical science," Mr Jenrick said.

(Image: Photopress Belfast)

Mr Jenrick said he hopes to see "significant increases" in testing levels this week.

He told Good Morning Britain: "We expect to be at 15,000 tests over the course of this week and then moving further forward in the future. We do need to go further and we need to do that faster."

On the suggestion that Britain, in comparison to Germany, has not prepared properly to run a comprehensive testing system, he said: "I accept that we do need to ramp up production significantly. It isn't easy to procure the tests in a global pandemic because there is a great deal of demand.

"Some countries have proved to be more able to get tests - that is partly dependant on the manufacturing base in their own country.

"Different countries have different healthcare manufacturing strengths. I think we will see with ventilators for example some of the strengths of British manufacturing coming through.

"We are taking receipt of the first 30 British-manufactured ventilators this week."

(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Government ministers said last night they would finally start using spare capacity to test NHS staff, after even the UK's limited testing capacity went unfilled despite enormous demand.

It's understood the gap between coronavirus testing capacity and actual tests was due to a 15% cap on staff tests, with 85% reserved for patients.

When medics were unable to fill the 85% patient quota, testing capacity went unused.

With testing capacity increasing, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told the NHS to remove the cap, so all spare capacity can be used for staff and families from today.

Meanwhile there was confusion last night after Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said there was a shortage of reagents - a vital ingredient for Covid-19 tests.

The Chemical Industry Association said: "While there is of course an escalating demand, there are reagents being manufactured and delivered to the NHS."

Mr Jenrick told Sky News: "The position, as I understand it, is you need a number of different ingredients to make an efficient test. And we have some of the ingredients available in the UK, but not all of them."

Mr Jenrick insisted "the industry is doing a fantastic job" but "this is a huge effort" and there is "extremely high demand internationally."

He said Britain was not able to "finally begin to ramp up supply", with work including a test where NHS staff will be able to take it in "the comfort of their own home" and post it off.

Mr Jenrick said 900 NHS staff were tested over the weekend, adding: "Clearly that's a low number but one we want to build on significantly."

Asked if the WHO was right to say Britain was too slow, Mr Jenrick told Sky News' Kay Burley: "The WHO said overall that they supported our approach.

"Different countries have taken different approaches in this and while it is helpful to compare ourselves to other countries and we are doing that obviously there are limitations to that because we have chosen a particular path.

"And different countries will make different decisions in terms of the types of people they test.

"I think we will obviously learn lessons later on as to which country got this right."