Data from essential workers’ home testing and drive-through kits have been ‘disappearing into a black hole,’ according to NHS sources, reported the HSJ. Without the information, local authorities and organisations do not know exactly how many people in their area have tested positive for the virus.

A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson has denied that tests have been lost and said there was a ‘technical error relating to postcode data, but this has now been fixed’.

The National Testing Programme (NTP), which is coordinated by the Department of Health and Social Care with the consultancy firm Deloitte, provides home tests to key workers or symptomatic members of their household. But an internal email, sent from a regional NHS incident centre, is believed to have said that NTP results are ‘increasingly becoming unavailable’ and cannot be reported ‘until further notice’.

This means that reporting of test results is only being based on NHS lab tests but they make up less than half of total tests currently being carried out.

The news site quoted the internal email, sent at the weekend, as saying: ‘No new national testing programme data will be reported in this brief from 4 May until further notice. This is due to the NTP testing numbers increasingly becoming unavailable.

‘A reporting solution for NTP data is being built into the [Department for Health and Social Care] portal – once available, it will be captured in this testing brief again.’

The information is critical for the Covid-19 response in the area, particularly when implementing measures in line with the Government’s track and trace strategy.

A senior national NHS source said the NTP had previously been ‘publishing clear details’ of the number of people visiting drive-through test centres but ‘it’s now impossible to get that data from them and they are not sharing it with groups they used to share it with internally’.

After facing widespread criticism for moving too slowly on mass testing compared with countries such as Germany, the UK Government has ramped up testing. But since initially hitting the 100,000 target at the end of April, officials have struggled to maintain it.

Testing dropped below the Government’s 100,000 a day target on Monday, despite hitting it again on Sunday – the first time in nine days that it had been achieved.

At Tuesday’s daily Downing Street press briefing, Business Secretary Alok Sharma said that 85,293 tests had been carried out on Monday, falling from 100,490 the previous day.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the goal is to have a testing capacity of 200,000 a day by the end of the month.

Last week the Government had to send 50,000 tests on chartered flights to the US to be processed following an equipment failure in a UK lab.

Boots has also sparked criticism for attempting to recruit 1,000 current staff members and unpaid volunteers to carry out coronavirus swab tests.

A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘Claims that the data of tens of thousands of tests are disappearing is factually wrong and highly misleading.

‘There was a recent technical error relating to postcode data, but this has now been fixed, and a fully corrected data flow was issued last week. This did not prevent public health bodies from undertaking contact tracing of those with positive results.’