While London-based journalists squabble about whether or not the UK Government has reached 200,000 tests on a particular day, it is clear that whichever way they are counted England now has one of the largest testing capacities in Europe. Wales, by comparison has stumbled from missed target to missed target, as of the end of last month carrying out fewer than 3,000 tests when the First Minister had set a target for 10,000. Guido has compiled a timeline of the whole debacle…

• Early March: Welsh Government promises 6,000 tests by 1 April
• 21 March: Welsh Government promises to boost capacity to 9,000 tests per day
• 31 March: Welsh Government has capacity to deliver 800 tests.
• Early April: Welsh Government promises 5,000 tests a day by mid-April
• 15 April: Welsh Government has capacity to deliver 1,300 tests.
• 15 April: 5,000 test target scrapped.
• 1 May: Wales conducts 1,090 tests. England conducts 122,000.
• 17 May: Welsh Government sets new target of 10,000 tests by the end of May
• 31 May: Welsh Government carries out 2,945 tests.

A leaked report has stated that Wales would need to ramp up testing to 36,000 per day in order to track and trace infections, yet they are running at just 10% of that number. Yesterday Guido reported that the Welsh First Minister has not been meeting the Prime Minister. If lessons from England were learnt, there would be less of a mess in Wales…