Government 'overstated testing figures by 200,000' during pandemic - Metro.co.uk

On May 21, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said 2.06 million people had been tested at the government’s daily press conference.

Testing figures were overstated by roughly 20,000 each week, while the government stopped releasing daily data on how many individual people had been tested in England on May 23.

The government still publishes daily figures for the number of tests carried out, and total testing capacity.

Boris Johnson’s spokesperson has explained: ‘This is because the daily people-tested statistic only counts new people being tested.

He said: ‘It seems that the real reason why the government stopped issuing figures for the number of people tested each day is because they never hit their 100,000 people a day target and they were too embarrassed to admit it.