A father was left stunned after seeing hundreds of people standing in a ‘five-hour’ queue waiting for Covid tests at a walk-in centre in Manchester. Tony Kirvin, 43, needed to get his son Michael tested after the 14-year-old started showing mild symptoms and was sent home from school.
The nearest testing centre was a 120-mile round trip, which he said was not feasible, so Mr Kirvin instead drove to a walk-in centre near their home in Bury on Thursday. But he was shocked to see hundreds of people queuing up outside the Mosses Centre, with many not wearing masks, video footage shows.
It comes amid wider complaints that the NHS Test and Trace system is directing people to Covid-19 test centres hundreds of miles away from their homes. Health Secretary Matt Hancock recently claimed that an ‘unacceptable’ number of people were overloading the UK’s coronavirus testing system by asking for a test when they don’t have symptoms.
