Scottish Labour has demanded that the SNP government ‘pull out all the stops’ to increase testing as it has been revealed that in the past month Scotland has processed fewer coronavirus tests per million than the other UK nations.

Analysis by Scottish Labour of testing figures reported between the 17th of September and the 16th of October, has revealed that only 88,527 tests were processed in Scotland per million people.

In contrast, every other UK nation has processed over 95,000 tests per million people during the same period with Northern Ireland and England both reporting over 100,000.

Scottish Labour has said that this should serve as a wake up call for the SNP government and that action must be taken urgently to increase the number of processed tests in light of Scotland’s high R number and increasing numbers of cases.

Commenting, Scottish Labour deputy Leader Jackie Baillie said:

“These statistics have demonstrated plainly that testing in Scotland is lagging far behind every other UK nation.

“Far too few key workers are being tested and we are running the risk of a substantial number of asymptomatic cases going undetected.

“With cases of the virus rising rapidly in Scotland, it is vital that the number of tests being processed is increased as a matter of priority.

“From the outset of this pandemic the advice of the WHO has been clear: “Test, test, test”. Despite this, and their alleged testing capacity, the SNP government is failing to keep up with every other UK nation.

“This is not good enough. The time has come for the SNP to pull out all the stops and test, test, test.”