Britain sent coronavirus tests to US for processing

The UK had to send coronavirus tests to the United States to be processed after an issue cropped up at one of its laboratories.

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper has, in a report, said that as many as 50,000 test samples were sent on chartered flights to the US last week.

There was an issue with one of the labs, and the contingency plan included taking some of the tests to the United States for the tests to be processed.

Britain, of late, has ramped up its testing programme, but since hitting its target of 1,00,000 a day at the end of April has struggled to maintain that level.

The latest figures from the Department of Health show there have been been 17,28,443 tests in total, including 96,878 on May 8.

Britain has so far reported 2,15,260 and 31,587 fatalities.