Just stop it

It may or may not be a war against coronavirus in the UK, but we can do without propaganda.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, so busy that he signs edicts just 'Matt', asked about ventilators earlier this week said “We’ve made serious progress on that; there’s now over 12,000 that we’ve managed to get to. We started with 5,000, so we’ve been buying ventilators and we’ve also been engaged with companies who are going to turn their production over to ventilators.”

Now it seems we have 8,000, according to NHS England.

Boris Johnson has talked incessantly about 'ramping up' testing for the virus, with a target of 25,000 tests a day. The highest number of tests performed in one day so far stands at 8,400 on Thursday 19 March. Since then the average daily figure for testing has been around 4,500.

This morning, in a display now typical of this administration, Edward John Comport Argar, an MP since 2015, and a Health Minister since September, blustered through an interview with Martha Kearney on Today, BBC Radio 4, on these figures and more.  He should be made to listen back to it.