The New York City Police Department will have more than 1,000 police officers on foot, bikes and in vehicles to enforce social distancing during the weekend
Analysis by CNN's Luke McGeeMatt Hancock, the UK's Health Secretary, proudly announced on Friday that the country had hit an ambitious coronavirus testing target that it set at the beginning of the month.
On April 2, after weeks of criticism that the UK was lagging behind its European counterparts like Germany on testing, Hancock said he was"setting the goal of 100,000 tests per day, by the end of this month. That is the goal and I am determined that we will get there."Striking an upbeat tone, Hancock said:"I knew it was an audacious goal, but we needed an audacious goal.
Jonathon Ashworth, the opposition Labour party's shadow health secretary, has already issued a statement, accusing the government of fiddling the numbers. "Increasing testing is an important milestone. But many would have expected the 100,000 promise to have been met by actually carrying out testing, not simply because 39,000 kits had been mailed out," he said.
It is, however, also reasonable for critics to point out that the date and the number of tests carried out is entirely arbitrary and what really matters is a coherent purpose for those tests being carried out — such as rolling out a contact tracing program. So, while the UK government can be proud of its extraordinary expansion of testing in such a short period of time — and no one can deny that more testing is a positive thing — it's reasonable that critics would find any backslapping for simply keeping its own promise somewhat unedifying.
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