THE U.K. Government has promised again to increase the testing of citizens for COVID-19 after it consistently failed to reach its target of 10,000 per day.

Criticism of the government has mounted and ministers are now aiming to prioritize the testing of National Health Service (NHS) workers in a bid to get healthy, self-isolating staff, back to work.

Around 2,000 NHS front-line workers have been tested since the coronavirus outbreak began, according to Downing Street. The service employs 1.2 million people in England alone.

Germany has been testing about 500,000 people a week, while Britain’s current capacity is just 12,750 a day, a figure the government said it was aiming to double to 25,000 by mid-April.

“I hope on testing ... you will see significant increases this week. We expect to be at 15,000 tests over the course of this week and then moving further forward in the future,” housing minister Robert Jenrick told broadcaster ITV.

“We do need to go further and we need to do that faster.”

The number of coronavirus deaths in the U.K. rose to 2,921 people, figures on Thursday showed, a 24 percent increase in a day. The confimed cases are over 29,000.

One of the previous day’s victims was a 13-year-old boy with no apparent underlying health conditions. (SD-Agencies)