The first is the PCR, or polymerase chain reaction test that's being used on a large scale globally.

It's a simple test where a swap from the back of the throat or noses taken the result can be obtained in a couple of days.

As the test looks for the existence of genetic material from the virus, it's considered extremely accurate.

The second type of test is for those who have had the infection.

It looks for antibodies to covert.

19 on is also regarded as extremely accurate.

It does require a blood test that it can give results in 10 minutes.

Antibodies can live in the body for a long time, so the tests could be used long after recovery.

Our health and social care course on the Victoria McDonald reports Test test test.

We do intend to continue to scale up testing so that we hit 25,000 tests of dates.

We do not have sufficient testing, so we've now bought 3.5 1,000,000 antibody tests.

Everybody wants this So there is a global shortage of these tests are crucially important.

We have ordered and we have planned ahead.

The government has a CZ weaken.

See repeatedly promised scaling up testing for covered 19 with plans to reach 250,000 today.

Reality so far is significantly smaller.

Compared with our European neighbours is this graph shows we are well behind the curve?

Early on, public health, England or PhD tested everyone suspected of having the virus once the battle to contain it had been lost, they started testing only the most vulnerable patients in hospitals, as well as care, home and prison clusters.

Repeated questions have been asked about why there is no general population testing and why we had not prepared earlier.

It is now clear there is a shortage of materials to do the PCR testing, which happens in laboratories.

Indeed, a leaked email from a major N.

H s trust reveals, we have faced a slight issue with swab results over this weekend and today, with very few results returning, it would appear that it is sheer volume.

They're working hard to get more runs up and running, but there is a concern with a supply of re agents.

It is therefore important that we ensure we only swap patients and staff who have symptoms and who meet the criteria.

Only 8278 tests were done on Sunday on just under 5000 people, suggesting this trust was far from alone.

Yet Germany is now doing 500,000 tests a week.

This leading virologist told us it was about planning.

I think one off the bottle next, currently in many countries is supply reagents for laps on dhe, I believe I'm not sure what I believe.

That this is somehow like the supply follows the demand and we we created a demand very early on in Germany s.

So what happened is, in fact, that we, um, rolled out this test already in January, and I mean, this was this was available to labs across the globe.

But in Germany, we have a community that's very open for establishing new diagnostic essays for several structural reasons.

There are a range of self testing kits currently being evaluated, including samples of the 3.5 million antibody tests which the government has promised.

We used one kit to test Hamish Anderson.

He's been in isolation with severe symptoms for Corona virus for 15 days and is now out and feeling better.

He tested at the height of his illness, but it was negative.

He tested again today, and it shows he does have the antibodies.

I feel relieved that I know I've had it.

Hopefully I can't pass it to anyone else on Daz and when I can get out there and start working again, I can do that in a in a way that I know that I've had it.

Obviously, this is not meant to be scientific, but it does highlight the desperate need to find out who has had covered 19 and who can go back to work, especially health care workers.

It's estimated one and four and now off, sick or in isolation.

I think it's really important to be open with the public.

Andi with staffing the images about tthe e volume off testing that is available on then, Therefore you may need to prioritize who gets the test.

But at the moment, what we're being told is that we're going to see this massive ramping up of testing, but we don't have a time scale, so every day, naturally, the doctors I represent are waiting because they believe that they will be tested.

It also remains unclear why it's taking so long in the UK to use university and private laboratories as they are in Germany.

This responsibility lies with the Department of Health and Social Care.

But there are also delays and signing off the evaluations of different types of PCR and infections tests.

Channel four News has seen a list of 19 different available virus testing systems that were being evaluated by PhD on March the 6th 3 weeks later, we know of just three of these Rosh no oversight and ran docks who are now supplying tests, P H E said tonight.

The rollout of additional capacity requires properly trained staff equipment and a supply of consumables, as well as for a validation process for the lab to ensure the results are correct.

Accuracy is especially important given the P H E and N HS.

Laboratory capacity is focused on testing the most vulnerable patients, and I see youse for whom the result will influence vital clinical management and infection prevention and control decisions.

And in response to questions about testing tonight, the Cabinet Office minister said this a critical constraint on the ability to rapidly increased testing capacity is the availability off the chemical re agents which are necessary in the testing.

The prime minister on the health Secretary are working with companies worldwide to ensure that we get the material we need to increase tests off all kinds.

Today it was announced that 10,767 people in England alone are currently in hospital with covered 19 symptoms up from over 9000 yesterday.

More numbers.

But behind those numbers are some desperately ill patients on Victoria is with me now live.

What is going on with testing?

Well, it is one of the first acknowledge acknowledgements that we've had from government today that there is this problem with supply.

Although we perhaps known this for a while ourselves.

So what we need to know now is why they didn't plan this earlier because we saw that Germany could see that there was a problem with with getting these re agents or whatever and they started getting them in in January.

Okay, so this will all come out from the wash when we do an analysis after this is all over.

But the fact is very, very important.

People in the health service, and you have people like Jeremy Hump and now the chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, who was saying, Why aren't we testing Maur?

And it seems to me that there is a systems problem that there is that this problem with not getting university labs up and running the problem with not getting the testing done quicker is it's inexplicable when we know just how urgent this problem is.

And I don't doubt that everybody involved wants the best that they do want to test.

But there is something.

There is some barrier and it's not clear.

And it's not just that there isn't enough free agent.

There's something else going on now.

We also saw a big jump in the absolute number of deaths being reported today.

But there is also some confusion around those numbers, and they slightly change according to what you're looking at.

Precisely.

Can you explain this?

No, I can't.

And I actually cried.

I wish I could.

But for all of us, there are problems with all the numbers.

It's the same with the testing, so it looks like some of the trusts are reporting over three or four days We saw that with Northward Park last week.

Some trust, sir, reporting on the day or up to the weekend.

Then we have the Office of National Statistic Figures, which came out for the first time today, which are looking at community deaths and deaths and care homes, for instance.

Now they increase the figures up to March the 20th.

The death rate figures by 24% so you can see there is a problem already and comparing like with life.

Yesterday we saw lower than expected death figures.

Today we're seeing quite a big increase, and it's it's very hard then to see where it whether there's a leveling off for where we are in terms of the epidemic, except that we know probably that it is still going up and up and up the factors.

And as I said in my film just now, of course, behind every single one of these figures are people really people, and we probably can understand that there are some people out there who have died, who we will never know had Corona virus who will it will never be attributed to because they weren't tested before.

They don't know because they weren't tested or it wasn't put on the death certificate.

Victoria, thank you very much.

With the speed of testing for Corona virus being deemed an absolute priority is you've heard Sanderson.

Liverpool are among those working to establish where the new 10 minute tests are accurate and can be rolled out for widespread use.

But they say it will be weeks rather than days before the tests can be properly validated.

It comes as academics that other universities are offering the government space and resources to increase current testing.

Our North of England correspondent Claire Fallon, has this report inside this lap there, gathering the data that could turn around the odds in the battle against Corona virus.

Tight biosecurity measures mean we're out here looking in while in debt.

They test the tests that could transform the response.

We call them lateral flow test.

But most people would recognize them as a sort of pregnancy tests, so something you come or less do yourself on.

The results are available in 10 minutes.

We've heard about 10 minutes testing before, but the work being led by Dr Emily Adams in Liverpool is to try and establish whether new tests work, they're checking the reliability of diagnostic tools that identify the code with 19 DNA as well as antibody tests.

The reveal potential immunity that a kind of tests we've been told repeatedly for weeks will be ramped up in number and rolled out very soon.

There have been incidents is across Europe where large batches of tests have bean procured, and they've had to be sent back to the companies involved because they have not bean up to standard.

So it that those reports concerning it's great that they're being picked up on.

We just want to make sure that any testing in the UK and further afield is high quality.

But it must be frustrating when you hear people talking about were doing tests at the moment.

We're gonna be rolling these out within a matter of days when you know it's more time consuming than that.

I guess there's so much interest in the diagnostic aspect of the work.

But validation is really key, right?

We don't want tohave bad tests available to patients.

We don't want them to say that they've had an antibody response to infection when in fact they haven't it all in another lab in another city.

They're freeing up space and getting a team ready.

We're trying to understand what this disease is.

Rules interested, why patients responding in some cases other trying to understand why some people die in some people, you know, main instant, save as many lives as possible in the short, medium and long term the University of Manchester on the city's hospitals, appalling resources and knowledge and formed a rapid response.

Research units, Professor Graham Lord told me, As the number of cases accelerates in some parts of the law, they may need a different approach to that in London.

Greater Manchester has an older, less healthy population and looked in on average.

And we know that this virus is particularly severe on older patients and patience in what we call came orbiters.

But my concern is that it well, it could potentially potentially widen those health inequalities because I think population of Greater Manchester and under no off more generally, I like me to be more severely affected.

It's a bleak prospect, But as so many have said, more testing is vital in shifting the odds and saving more lives.

We have asked the government to come on the program, but no one was available tonight.

Earlier, I spoke to Dr Rangarajan some path from the foundation for innovative new Diagnostics who's working with World Health Organization on diagnostics.

Four covered 19 and I began by asking him if the UK government's ambition to test up to 25,000 people a day was enough for a population of 65 million, I can tell you just listening to the volume of test requirements that's not gonna be adequate for a population within U.

K.

And I could imagine a place like London with its population on the demand for these tests, will be quickly overrun in a hospital based setting, given the limitations similar to most of what most of the countries of experience, I mean at the moment, people who are admitted into hospital with severe Corona virus symptoms seem to be getting tested.

Some health care workers, some V.

I.

P s politicians, royal family, that kind of thing.

What does that mean for the reliability of statistics about the rate of infection?

Because they've also said today that you know, the green shoots of perhaps flattening a beginning.

Can we rely on those sorts of numbers.

It's a start, but we know that it's not going to give you the full picture.

A CZ, definitely a CZ.

Dr Ted Rose from W.

H O said, Unless you really scale up testing and start testing really broadly, you'll never get to the two numbers.

When is the right time to start?

Large scale antibody testing in a population definitely not for initial triage are just screening, and I think that's been one of the biggest challenges that we are facing is there's a lot of noise made about these rapid anybody tests.

But if you understand what anybody tests are exactly as the name suggests, that's what the human body mounts us in response to the vital infection, which means it takes somewhere between seven and 10 days before he can start detecting these anybody's.

So I think it's not appropriate to think of rapid psychological tests or anybody based as at the front line at the stage of the game.

The government also saying that there is a problem with the supply of re agents, the chemicals being used in these tests, how much of a problem is that worldwide on the Regent shortage is not just in terms of the what the manufacturer claims in terms of their own.

Aziz in regions.

It's also answer literary agent that need to be there.

So we have seen shortages of everything from simple swabs, which you need to collect the specimen.

If it under the specimens, you can order the testing.

It is a challenge, but it's not limited to the rapid test.

So I don't want to confuse the two in the same breath.

Except some people also already also raising questions about whether we should have taken these decisions a lot earlier.

Have you a science has been saying You should be ordering the chemicals now.

You should be ordering the test now.

You know you should be doing everything much earlier, given that the warning went out at the end of January, wanting went out even before.

Not an end of January is it was already too late.

Having said that once early warning bells in the early part of January started coming through.

Definitely, I think, as a ah world organizations we should have other than the countries that should have been a better preparedness plan put in place and not assumed that somehow this was gonna be contained within the, uh, you know, Chinese, or even at the time where Korea started implementing some of the some of its early policy, there's gonna be contained.