Piers Morgan says officials have been ‘lying’ over coronavirus testing numbers

Despite a number of pledges from government over coronavirus testing, no-one can realistically be sure of whether it is hitting its targets because figures shared by the Department of Health and Social Care appear to show the numbers of those being tested as ‘unavailable’, and have been for more than a week.

Good Morning Britain presenter Morgan suggested it was a sign that officials were ‘lying’ over the numbers of people being tested.

‘They’re saying they’re trying to catch-up and to unify the data that they’ve been producing over the last few months,’ explained Dr Hilary Jones.

‘Yeah funny enough, let me tell you what happened. If you may remember we’ve been on their case for a while, for saying the number of tests conducted was X, and then it turned out the number of people tested was a lot lower.

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‘Then it emerged that they are counting as a test both a nose swab and a mouth swab – two tests for one person.

‘So everyone who had two swab, which is most people – my understanding is most people have had two swabs – so funny enough ever since Public Health England had to admit that, they’ve stopped revealing the number of people tested.

‘Which makes me think they’ve been lying.

‘Unavailable now for ten consecutive days, the number of people tested. We’ve no idea as a country because our government won’t tell us’.

A No 10 spokesperson last week said it was unable to explain why Department of Health testing figures had been dropped saying it was ‘not something I have noticed.’