The Government has failed to hit its target of sending everyone their coronavirus test results within 24 hours by the end of June.
Just over half of all test results (55 per cent) are received within a day of the swab being done, NHS Test and Trace data showed today.
Nine out of 10 tests carried out at major testing centres were done within a day, but this dropped to just two out of 100 when it came to home tests.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised on June 3 that every test would be turned around within one day by the end of the month.
Experts say getting test results fast and carrying out contact tracing immediately is vital to stopping the spread of coronavirus, because there is only a short window to alert people that they are at risk of infecting others without yet knowing they’re ill.
Today’s data also showed that the contact tracing element of Test and Trace is still struggling, and the proportion of people successfully reached fell again last week.
Between June 25 and July 1, just 70.8 per cent of close contacts of coronavirus patients were successfully reached and asked to self-isolate – down from 90.7 per cent in the system’s first week of operation.
The month-old programme’s problems come as it was revealed that the Government has already spent an astonishing £10billion on getting it up and running.
The proportion of tests which produce results within 24 hours (dark blue bars) has increased dramatically since the start of NHS Test and Trace at the end of May, but it still remains below the 100 per cent pledged by the Prime Minister in June
The Prime Minister was grilled on the issue of test turnaround time in the House of Commons on June 3 by former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who now chairs the Health and Social Care Select Committee of MPs.
Mr Hunt had asked the Prime Minister to reveal how many tests were currently being processed within 24 hours and to commit to publishing that number on a regular basis.
Mr Johnson replied: ‘The answer is that we already turn around 90 per cent of tests within 48 hours.
‘The tests conducted at the 199 testing centres, as well as the mobile test centres, are all done within 24 hours, and I can undertake to him now to get all tests turned around in 24 hours by the end of June, except for difficulties with postal tests or insuperable problems like that.’
Today’s data shows that, of tests carried out in the large drive-in testing centres, 91.8 per cent were completed within 24 hours between June 25 and July 1.
This accounted for 80,479 people – the most of any type of testing carried out.
For mobile testing units, such as those set up at care homes or in parks in Leicester during the local outbreak there, the 24-hour return rate was 89.6 per cent for 46,061 people.
Return rates were significantly lower for the smaller testing operations, including the satellite test centres, which are used at hospitals, the return rate was just 25.7 per cent.
For home tests, which are posted out to people’s homes, a dismal 1.8 per cent – one in 50 – produced a result within 24 hours. Two thirds took between one and two days.
The statistics are improvements on the early stages of the NHS Test and Trace programme.
In the first week, between May 28 and June 3, only 7.4 per cent of all tests had results returned within 24 hours.
This rose to 9.5 per cent the week after, to 16.5 per cent the week after that, then to 41.3 per cent between June 18 and June 24.
Executive Chair of NHS Test and Trace, Dido Harding, said: ‘We are committed to continually improving NHS Test and Trace, to reach more people at risk of passing the virus on as quickly as possible.
‘This week we have seen test turnaround times improve further, with the majority of positive cases reached by contact tracers in under 24 hours.
‘Anyone with symptoms can easily book a test, expect rapid results, and will hear promptly from NHS Test and Trace if they are tested positive.’
Test and Trace data also showed that the contact tracing element of the system continues to struggle to reach people at risk of spreading Covid-19.
The proportion of the contacts of positive COVID-19 cases reached by England’s test and trace system fell again in its fifth week of operation.
The Department of Health said 4,347 people had their cases transferred to the system between June 25 and July 1.
There were 14,892 people identified as close contacts, and 70.8 per cent were successfully reached and asked to self isolate.
That is down from 73 per cent who were reached in the previous week, and 82.4 per cent reached the week before that. In the first week of the system’s operation this was 90.7 per cent.
Statistics also showed that contact tracers were not able to reach any more of the people who tested positive for coronavirus – 77.4 per cent down from 77.9 per cent last week.
They have, however, marginally improved the speed at which they are contacting people.
Both positive cases and their contacts were contacted within 24 hours with a greater degree of success than last week.
For positive-testing patients this rose from 65.7 per cent to 69.8 per cent in a week, with another quarter being reached within 48 hours.
For the contacts of those patients, 83.3 per cent were contacted within 24 hours, up from 82 per cent the week before.
The data comes after documents released yesterday revealed that the Treasury had released £48.5 billion of additional expenditure on public services for the immediate response to the outbreak.
Of this, a massive £10billion was spent on NHS Test and Trace.
Earlier this week, Baroness Harding, who is charge of the programme, admitted it is still is not hitting government targets – but claimed it is ‘not far away’.
She said more work needs to be done to build up public confidence in the tracing system and the expected app, because neither will work without people’s co-operation. She said people’s trust must be earned rather than expected.
A report has now revealed the full extent of the financial burden of the programme, while also outlining how the government blew £15 billion on personal protective equipment for frontline health staff.