The Doctors’ Association has criticised the coronavirus testing system as “an utter shambles” after collecting a dossier of cases where the system has led to long journeys and considerable waits for tests and results.
Hospital medics and GPs have described how delays of up to four days to get a test and five days to receive the result forces them to isolate and means they cannot work normally in the NHS. One case was of a male GP in Margate in Kent who was displaying symptoms told to travel 266 miles to Leeds in West Yorkshire to have a test.
In another case a hospital doctor in Basildon, Essex, had to undertake a 250-mile round trip to Glenfield hospital in Leicester. When the occupational health department at his NHS trust could not provide a test they advised him to use the test-and-trace website instead.
Full story in the Guardian, 14 September 2020
