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Just 10% Of Covid Tests Hit Boris Johnson's 24 Hour Turnaround Target

Boris Johnson’s test-and-trace crisis has worsened after official figures showed that just one in 10 Covid tests got a result within 24 hours.

The figures for the week between September 10 and September 16 showed that only 10.4% of all types of test met the PM’s own target of being completed within a day.

Johnson had told parliament earlier this year that he wanted a 100% completion rate by the end of June, but that ambition has never been met.

The latest figure is even lower than the 14.3% of the previous week, itself seen as a major failure. The week before that, the overall “within 24 hours” figure was 32%.

The proportion of “in-person” tests - conducted at regional, local and mobile test centres - has also fallen once more, from 33% to just 28.2% week-on-week.

With the public complaining of huge delays in even booking a test, the latest figures suggest the system run by Baroness Dido Harding is still struggling to cope as coronavirus begins to spread across the UK once more.

The median time taken to receive a test result at Regional Test Sites increased to 30 hours from 27 hours in the previous week.

Similarly, Mobile Testing Units increased to 31 hours up from 26 hours. Times for results from local test sites decreased slightly to 34 hours from 35 hours during the same period.

Turnaround times for satellite test centres - used for care homes - and home testing kits improved, but are still well behind all other types of testing.

Crucially, the total number of test results processed decreased by 19% compared to the previous week.

Government insiders said this was more about results taking longer to be communicated to people, rather than a fall in tests being processed.

The number of tests processed in hospitals and at in-person centres increased by 22% from 1,254,066 last week to 1,531,950.

The overall 10.4% figure for tests done within 24 hours is the lowest since the week to June 10, when the figure stood at 18.4%.

Just 1.8% of people in England who used a...

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