The test to release scheme is ※falling apart§ and has been called ※a complete shambles§ after two companies withdrew from the scheme just hours after it started while travellers struggled to secure tests in a meaningful timescale.
The scheme, which started today, allows travellers arriving in England to pay for a private Covid test and reduce their quarantine from ten to five days if they are negative.
The list of approved providers was only announced just hours before the scheme started and two have already been removed from the list 每 Same Day Doctor and The Private GP Clinic.
Same Day Doctor said it had been inundated with enquiries and had asked to be removed as a result.
The company＊s CEO Dr Laurence Gerlis told BTN Europe that he had made the decision to withdraw from the scheme temporarily after the company had received 1,000 requests for tests on Monday after the list＊s publication and a further 800 on Tuesday morning.
Dr Gerlis laid the blame not with the government but with civil servants.
※This is a land-grab by civil servants from the now defunct PHE and UKAS who took it away from CQC and made a pig＊s ear of the application forms which were designed for huge laboratories and totally inappropriate to clinics. I don＊t even think Ministers know about this.§
Dr Gerlis believes there was no need to force clinics to seek additional accreditation before the scheme started.?
He said, ※They should have left all the private providers in place. Since June, we have all been doing thousands of tests to enable people to leave the country as dictated by foreign airlines and governments and there has been no acknowledgement of the work we have done in this regard.§
Dr Gerlis has apologised to those who have been unable to get a test through the company.?
※I am so sorry we have had to let down so many people,§ he said, adding that the company would go back on the list again after New Year.
Lyndsey Alexander from Stockport has just returned to the UK and has been trying unsuccessfully to get a test from one of the providers on the scheme.
※It is a complete shambles,§ she said. ※I booked with Same Day Doctor in Manchester and now they say they are withdrawing from the scheme.
※Other providers take three days to process tests. As you can get out after ten days, that is pretty pointless. There are not enough providers. It seems the scheme is little more than a PR exercise with little thought or planning involved.§
Another of the clinics on the approved list 每 Medicspot 每 says it is not accepting any new orders for swabs as the lab they use is too busy with existing samples.?
※We will have new labs running by mid-week to provide extra redundancy to safeguard against these issues in the future,§ it said in a statement on its website.
Three new providers - Collinson (which runs testing sites at Heathrow and other airports), Nationwide Pathology and Synlab - have been added to the list since last night.
Paul Charles, CEO of travel consultancy The PC Agency, which has been tracking quarantine measures, said: ※It＊s a chaotic start for a system that was flagged as a solution to travel recovery. It has been weeks in planning yet has taken just minutes to fall apart.?
※This is not the way for governments to instil confidence in consumers and help them travel seamlessly. I think most people will simply not pay for a test now, partly because they can＊t book one, and opt to spend a few more days in quarantine 每 precisely the opposite of what the government envisaged.
※I cannot fathom why government won＊t consult the sector intensively so as to help it put systems in place which boost travel recovery, rather than damage it.§
BTN Europehas asked the DfT for comment about the problems.