Achieving the capacity to test 500,000 people a day for COVID-19 is one of my proudest moments ever. No one can know what it has taken to build it - lab by lab, machine by machine, supply by supply, amazing person by amazing person - in an unimaginably complex environment.

Our NHS Labs in England have gone from capacity for 40,000 tests a day in May to 100,000 today - with point of care and rapid testing increasing that number further to 131,000; whilst PHE have surged to 13,100 and the NHS in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland 27,000.

Our Lighthouse and Partner Labs have gone from capacity for 80,000 a day to 346,500, achieved via process improvement, increased automation, new equipment and the support of hundreds of university students. I visited our Milton Keynes Lab recently, we have a lot to learn from it.

There has also been a focus on improving access to testing. In May there were 172 test sites, nationally controlled, mostly drive-thru. There are now 578 + sites, 242 of which are in local communities and 115,000 tests a day are under the control of Directors of Public Health.

We have carefully positioned test sites within or in close proximity to universities too. 94% now have a facility within 1.5 miles of their campus centre, and we can make that 100% if those remaining would like us to.

We have also paid close attention to the reasons why some people don’t access our services, for example arranging tests via community leaders for those afraid to share their personal details.

We have a satellite testing service which dispatches 120,000 tests a day to care homes and sent out 33,500 tests a day to schools during September. We are also working with GP practices across the country to provide them with test kits.

Our home testing service, whilst never the speediest of channels is remarkable in what it has achieved compared to other postal diagnostics, with most results returned within 2-3 days. The programme also supports pre-elective surgery testing with capacity for 10,000 tests a day.

The data from our Lighthouse Labs flows into the National Pathology Exchange and onward to PHE several times an hour, as well as into the GP record. We text the individual with their results as soon as they become available.

All tests are allocated on the basis of a clinically led prioritisation process overseen by the Chief Medical Officer Team. There is also clinical input into the delicate balance between capacity, tests processed and test turnaround times.

As well as testing to protect, find and enable we commission and retain oversight of the ONS and REACT surveys via our Testing Surveillance Teams. These surveys are crucial to our understanding of prevalence rates. We run studies in care homes, prisons and schools too.

We scour the world for new testing technologies with the support of the UK’s leading scientists, tracking every potential opportunity. We futility test and undertake laboratory, clinical and field validation as soon as safely possible and we pre-order to mitigate supply risk.

As such we have recently invested in LAMP, End-Point PCR and Lateral Flow Devices and other new technologies will follow. Excitingly LAMP is validated for asymptomatic staff testing in the NHS with sufficient scale to enable weekly staff testing in the future.

All of this has been achieved by determined and hard working individuals from across the NHS, civil service, academia, army and private sector, who work day and night to deliver the very best service possible.

And we know as well as anyone that testing is by no means perfect. In fact whatever list of improvements you can think of ours is longer.

Top priority is giving even greater control to local systems, whilst not losing the benefits of a flexible national infrastructure, lowering our lab utilisation and improving our logistics to reduce test turnaround times, and bringing Pillars 1 and 2 more closely together.

But most of all we need to better communicate that testing is a means to an end not an end it itself. It is not the strategy, it enables the strategy, and whilst we have a scaled diagnostic capability to be proud of, testing alone will never be the answer.

So now its time for me to hang-up my testing boots and fully handover to Mike Coup, my successor. Test and Trace has been the ride of a lifetime, the best of days, the worst of days. I am proud to have served my country and will continue the fight against COVID as CEO of @BWC_NHS