As the death toll due to coronavirus climbs to almost 3,000, officials in the UK responsible for emergency planning admit that they failed to take into account the need to test huge numbers of people when drawing up their plans, according to a report in The Telegraph.
The report adds that the World Health Organization (WHO) cautioned that mass testing would be necessary in such a scenario of pandemic, but British officials failed to heed the warning, because they believed that the more likely threat to public health would be a new strain of the flu virus.
The UK is still struggling to increase the amount of testing, with many workers in the NHS (State-run health service) unable to access testing for themselves.