British leader acknowledges testing shortfall

The British government's chief scientific adviser has acknowledged that the country should have been testing more people for the new coronavirus early in the country's outbreak. Patrick Vallance told Parliament's health committee that "if we'd managed to ramp up testing capacity quicker it would have been beneficial, and for all sorts of reasons that didn't happen." Critics say Britain's Conservative government responded too slowly when COVID-19 began to spread and failed to contain the outbreak by widely testing people with symptoms, then tracing and isolating the contacts of infected people.

Countries that did that, including South Korea and Germany, have recorded lower death rates than those that did not. The U.K. has recently expanded its testing capacity and is setting up a "test, track and trace" program as it looks to relax a nationwide lockdown.

Britain is one of the world's hardest-hit countries in the pandemic and looks likely to overtake Italy for the largest number of COVID-19 deaths in Europe.