As many as 85 per cent of frontline health staff self-isolating at home may not have coronavirus, and are being kept away from hospitals because of the government’s slow introduction of testing, a senior NHS official has said

Around a quarter of doctors and one in five of nurses are believed to be at home sick or self-isolating, increasing the pressure on colleagues facing thousands of additional admissions to hospital, in what the head of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, said were “some of the highest staff absences” ever seen.

Downing Street today revealed that only 2,000 of those at home – because they or someone in their household have displayed symptoms – have actually been tested for the virus.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has ordered NHS trusts to lift a cap which has so far seen the vast bulk of tests in hospital being set aside for patients, with just 8,000 to 9,000 staff tested in the locations where they work, out of a total NHS workforce of 1.3 million.

Senior NHS officials and ministers have repeatedly stressed the importance of testing to allow medics who are found not to be sick to return to work.

Revealing the results of initial small-scale testing, Mr Hopson said: “Of the members of staff who are self-isolating for 14 days, because they had a family member who potentially had coronavirus symptoms, only 15 per cent of them tested positive.

“If that is replicated, that means 85 per cent of the staff who are currently self-isolating can get back to work.”

However, this figure is being treated with caution in Whitehall, where it is thought it may represent a small or early sample which does not accurately reflect the current situation.

The comments come amid fierce criticism of ministers for failing to hit testing targets, while laboratories allegedly lie idle and a disputed claim about a shortage of chemical agents.

Just 8,630 people were tested on Monday – after the government wrongly claimed the promised 10,000 figure was hit last weekend.

Downing Street said that some 900 NHS staff were tested outside hospitals over the weekend, and that figure has since risen to around 2,000.

A shortage of vital chemical reagents has been blamed for the slow move to ramp up testing, but this has been challenged by both industry insiders and one of the government’s own scientific advisers.

Now Mr Hopson has appeared to confirm that thousands of NHS doctors and nurses are stuck at home for no reason, just as the epidemic hits its peak over the coming weeks.

The head of the organisation representing all NHS trusts in England told the BBC’s Newsnight that the “very intriguing piece of data” deepened the frustration of hospital leaders over the failure to test staff.

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Mr Hopson said they were also “short of swabs – the thing you put in your nose and your mouth to test”.

Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, admitted the 900 staff tested was “a low number” and could not say when a dedicated testing centre announced for Milton Keynes would be operational.

He denied the UK had “left it too late” to ramp up testing, but said Germany – which is testing 70,000 people a day – had started in “a better place to begin production at scale”.

Downing Street later said the Milton Keynes site was now operational and taking samples from around the country.

Figures from across the political spectrum, from Tony Blair to Jeremy Hunt, have pleaded with Boris Johnson to change course by starting mass testing – in the community, not just NHS staff.

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Even Donald Trump has piled in, calling the UK’s initial strategy of containing, rather than suppressing, coronavirus “very catastrophic” if it had been carried through.

The Chemical Industry Association expressed surprise at Michael Gove pointing to shortages, insisting reagents “are being manufactured and delivered to the NHS”.

Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London, and a government adviser, told the BBC: “As far as I know there isn’t a great shortage of supply, so that’s really new to me.”