Covid-19: MPs call on Public Health England to publish evidence for decision to drop community testing

A cross party group of MPs has said that Public Health England’s failure to publish the evidence behind its decision to discontinue community testing at the start of the covid-19 outbreak is “unacceptable.”

In a 19 page letter to the prime minister, the Science and Technology Committee called for publication of the evidence base and rationale informing Public Health England’s decision to concentrate testing for covid-19 in a limited number of its own laboratories and to expand testing capacity gradually, rather than surging capacity through a large number of available laboratories in research institutes, universities, and the public and private sectors.1

This had led to the government announcing on 12 March that testing would stop in the community and would occur principally within hospitals—a decision that was “one of the most consequential made during [the] crisis,” MPs said in the letter. “Amongst other consequences, it meant that residents in care homes—even those displaying covid-19 symptoms—and care home workers could not be tested at a time when the spread of the virus was at its most rampant.”

Their letter continued, “The failure of PHE [Public Health England] to publish the evidence on which its testing policy was based is unacceptable for a decision that may have had such significant consequences. The absence of disclosure of the evidence behind this decision may indicate no rigorous assessment was in fact made by PHE of other countries’ approach to testing.”

It said that testing capacity had been inadequate for most of the pandemic so far, arguing that “capacity was not increased early enough or boldly enough. Capacity drove strategy rather than strategy driving capacity.” It added that it was not clear that lessons had been learnt from the delays to testing.