Boris Johnson doubles coronavirus testing target to 200,000 per day by end of May

Labour's Keir Starmer savages goverment record, asking the PM: 'How on Earth did it come to this?'

Boris Johnson has set a new target of 200,000 daily coronavirus tests by the end of May, as he came under attack from Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions.

The Labour leader savaged Mr Johnson’s claim of “apparent success” for the government’s performance on coronavirus.

And he challenged health secretary Matt Hancock’s claim to have met his target of 100,000 daily tests, pointing out that the number had slumped well below this level on every day since the deadline of 30 April.

Returning to the House of Commons for the first time since his recovery from coronavirus, Mr Johnson confirmed that he will set out his roadmap out of lockdown in an address to the nation on Sunday, when he is expected to announce some easing of social distancing restrictions.

And he said it was now the government's "ambition" to hit 200,000 tests by the end of May and go beyond that at a later date. Although his announcement was a significant increase on Mr Hancock's earlier commitment, it still fell short of the PM's own promise as long ago as 25 March that test numbers would "very soon" reach 250,000.

In a notable ratcheting up of pressure on Johnson, Starmer said: “When the prime minister returned to work a week ago Monday, he said that many people were looking at the ‘apparent success’ of the government's approach.

“But yesterday we learnt tragically, that at least 29,427 people in the UK have now lost their lives to this dreadful virus.

“That's now the highest number in Europe. It's the second highest in the world.

“That's not success or apparent success. So can the Prime Minister tell us how on Earth did it come to this?”

Mr Johnson insisted that it was too early to make international comparisons, and said the government’s decisions had been guided throughout by “one overriding principle - to save lives and to protect our NHS”.

But Starmer retorted that the UK was “slow into lockdown, slow on testing, slow on tracing and slow on the supply of protective equipment” and said the government had not "got to grips" with the problem in care homes, where deaths continued to rise despite first secretary of state Dominic Raab's earlier claim that they were falling.

The Labour leader pointedly referred to the government's announcement that it had met its 100,000 test target on the deadline day at the end of April as a "claim" and pointed out that they had fallen since, asking: "What does the prime minister think was so special about 30 April that meant testing that day was so high?"

Mr Johnson insisted that there were "palpable" improvements in care homes and hailed "amazing work" by all those involved in increasing testing numbers.

And he said: "Capacity currently exceeds demand and we're working on that. We're running at about 100,000 a day.

"But the ambition clearly is to get up to 200,000 a day by the end of this month and then to go even higher. A fantastic testing regime is going to be absolutely critical to our long term economic recovery."