Once again, the government has been taken by surprise by the coronavirus

Editorial: Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock are struggling to ensure there are enough tests to keep schools open

Boris Johnson gives evidence to the liaison committee of MPs (Dave Brown/The Independent)

The prime minister adopted a welcome humble tone in his two sessions of interrogation by MPs yesterday. He told Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, that she was “right to express the frustration of people across this country”, and he told Greg Clark, the Conservative former cabinet minister, who asked if we have enough testing capacity: “The short answer is, no we don’t.”

Boris Johnson did his best to suggest that capacity was being increased quickly enough to meet demand within the “few weeks” that Matt Hancock, the health secretary, had cautiously mentioned as the intended timetable.  

Yet the government cannot avoid the impression that its response to coronavirus resembles the whack-a-mole approach that Mr Johnson has said is the policy towards new outbreaks of infections. He seems to have a passive attitude to governing, responding to problems as they become crises, but always behind events rather than in control of them.

In the spring, the government was forced to set a target for the expansion of testing capacity, of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April. With some corners cut and a certain amount of double counting, that target was declared achieved. Eventually, capacity increased further and ministers turned their attention to other things.  

Although the immediate pressure receded, there was never enough capacity for the kind of mass testing programme that the government has held out as its ambition. And it should have been anticipated that the reopening of schools might lead to an increase in infection, and that a further substantial increase in testing would be needed. Yet schools were provided with just 10 test kits each, and, when the infections associated with a new school term – many of them the common cold – started to spread, the testing system was quickly overwhelmed.  

As we report today, schools are struggling to cope with the lack of coronavirus tests, which means staff, pupils and often whole classes are being sent home to isolate for two weeks, when, if tests could be obtained, a negative result would allow schools to operate normally with only a few days’ interruption.  

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, says that the situation is “increasingly out of control”, and that schools are increasingly having to make public health decisions about who to send home without adequate guidance from the Department for Education. 

It is reasonable for the prime minister and the health secretary to try to impose some rationing of tests, as it is urgent that health and care sectors get their staff back to work as quickly as possible. But the reintroduction of rationing is an admission of the government’s failure to prepare for the inevitable. And it would be unforgivable for schools to slip down the list of the government’s priorities again.  

This generation of children have already lost far too much of their education this year. By the end of next month, the government really must ensure that true mass testing is available. But in the meantime, while hospitals and care homes remain the highest priority, schools must be next in line.