One million coronavirus tests a week can be delivered by a British company, but Public Health England (PHE) has not taken up the offer, it has emerged, amid growing concerns that the Government’s 100,000-a-day target is now unreachable.

Berkshire-based Apacor Ltd has already gained approval from the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to supply coronavirus antigen tests and said the first 150,000 could be delivered overnight.

The South Korean test, made by Wells Bio, is already being used by Germany, but the PHE laboratory at Colindale has still not sent for a sample so it can be verified and has said it cannot find time to talk to the company until next week.

Anthony Bellm, the Managing Director of Apacor, said: "We have been waiting for Colindale for two weeks, and it's frustrating because this supplier isn’t some small unknown company. This is the largest manufacturer of some types of tests in the world, and they can do one million tests a week.

"So we're just waiting. We are ready and able to help. We could do 150,000 tomorrow and they're just sitting there in a warehouse, ready."

To date, the Government has managed just 15,994 tests a day, despite setting an earlier target, on March 18, of 25,000 by the middle of this month. On Wednesday, it missed the target.

At Wednesday's briefing Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, denied that target had ever been set and caused confusion by suggesting there was spare capacity due to a lack of demand over the weekend, even though care homes wrote to the health minister on Friday to plead for tests.