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 …