Demand for coronavirus testing is “significantly outstripping the capacity we have”, head of NHS Test and Trace Baroness Harding has told MPs.
Lady Harding told the science and technology committee that the return to school meant demand from under-17s had doubled.
She acknowledged that results were also taking “slightly longer”.
But she said she was “very confident” of raising capacity to 500,000 tests a day by the end of October.
“We have plans to go beyond 500,000 a day,” Lady Harding said, before adding there was no formal target beyond the October deadline.
The number of people calling 119 and visiting the website to book tests was three to four times the number of available tests, Lady Harding told the committee – although she said that may exaggerate the problem as some people call repeatedly from different numbers.
She added they built the testing capacity for this autumn – which is now 242,817 a day – based on modelling from the Sage scientific advisory group,
“I don’t think anybody was expecting to see the really sizable increase in demand that has happened over the last few weeks,” she said.