Who is being tested for coronavirus in the UK?

As of last week, when the prime minister announced Britain was no longer in the “contain” phase of the pandemic, most testing outside of hospitals stopped. People with symptoms are expected to self-isolate but will not know whether they have Covid-19. That means they will not know if they are immune or still at risk – and a risk to other people.

Testing now mostly takes place in hospital. People in intensive care units and those with respiratory illness, especially if it is pneumonia, will get tested for Covid-19. When there is a cluster of infections, such as an outbreak in a care home, those people will also be tested.

The World Health Organization has criticised the approach of countries that are not prioritising testing, with its director general saying “you cannot fight a fire blindfolded … test, test, test”.

Will there be any testing for people in the community?

In late February, Public Health England said 100 GP practices had agreed to perform random coronavirus testing of people with symptoms – consistent coughs and a fever. That was just to monitor the spread of the virus, however, in the same way PHE monitors the spread of flu.

What about doctors and nurses on the frontline?

They are not being tested. Many of them are extremely disturbed by that. They are exposed to the infection through patients, some of whom will be admitted to hospital before anyone suspects they have the virus. They are very worried that they could spread the disease to their patients and take it home to their families. Without a test, they say, they do not know what to do if they or a member of their family begins to cough.

A junior doctor in an emergency assessment unit has started a petition, called “Test frontline NHS staff for Covid-19 as a priority”, which has so far attracted nearly 700,000 signatures.

Why are people with symptoms not being tested?

It appears to be a capacity issue, although the Department of Health and Social Care failed to respond to repeated requests for explanation. So far there have been about 44,000 tests in England, which the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, told the health select committee put it in “the top three or four countries in terms of testing”. PHE has a capacity of about 4,000 tests per day, he said, although last week NHS England put out a press release saying it was scaling up to 10,000 a day. Vallance said 4,000 a day “is clearly not going to be enough going forward” and said there was “a very big effort going on to try and ramp that up”.

He said healthcare workers were among the “key workers” they wanted to be able to test – but it is clear that will not happen very soon. Asked if the UK should have mass testing on the scale of South Korea, which has tested more than 250,000 people out of a population of 51 million, and is bringing infections down, Vallance said: “I think we need a big increase in testing. That’s what I’m pushing for very hard. Everyone is working hard to try and make that happen.”

What tests are being done?

At the moment, the NHS has only a test that can detect the virus in a nasal swab through laboratory analysis, which takes 24 hours at best. That tells us whether somebody’s illness is Covid-19. What the NHS wants is a test that can detect antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered from Covid-19, which would mean they were likely to be immune. No country is currently confirmed to have this test.

Are people getting private tests?

Yes. They are being offered at nearly £400 a time. Celebrities such as Idris Elba and some footballers appear to have paid for them. PHE says it has not validated and approved any private tests, and there may be some that are bogus. However, Vallance has also said the government was looking at all possible providers of an antibody test for the NHS, including the private sector.

A number of companies appear to be making tests on a large scale. One in Belfast is supplying tests to Europe and across the world. A British company is said to be making tests to export to Senegal. So far, the health department, PHE and NHS England have not said whether they have any plans to ramp up their supplies by buying from these or other companies.