THOUSANDS of people have flooded the online portal for ordering coronavirus testing kits.
Within minutes of the UK Government's website going live the daily allocated number of kits had been ordered by eager members of the public.
It comes after the Health Secretary Matt Hancock last night announced that all key workers in England would be eligible to apply to be tested from this morning.
He said that up to 10m key workers would be able to be tested - however this was later clarified as the total number should Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland's governments also expand the remit of those who could be tested.
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A spokesman for the Prime Minister confirmed that within two minutes of the testing website going live, all 5000 tests had been ordered for today.
He said: “Within two minutes of the portal opening this morning, 5,000 testing kits had been ordered.
“And that’s the available capacity for today.”
He added that up to 18,000 testing kits would be available per day by the end of next week, while 15,000 tests are expected to be carried out at drive-through centres across the country today.
Westminster officials have ramped up testing as they try to meet their goal of carrying out 100,000 tests a day by the end of this month.
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According to Downing Street capacity for tests is now over 50,000 however at the last count, in the 25 hours to 9am yesterday, only 23,560 had been done across Scotland, England and Wales.
Boris Johnson's spokesman also confirmed that there were no checks being carried out on the people who were applying for home testing kits, to determine if they were actually key workers.
Instead, he said, the Government were trusting that those asking for tests were eligible.
He explained: "As with many other aspects of the coronavirus response, we would expect the public to respond in good faith.
“That is what they have done with other aspects of the scheme, I think we’d expect it to be the same here.”
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