British entrepreneur steps in and donates £1 million to speed up Coronavirus testing for frontline NHS Staff

British entrepreneur Mike Fischer CBE promised £1 million the funds to the Covid-19 Volunteer Testing Network, which launched on Wednesday.

THE project aims to encourage laboratories to use their specialist equipment – most notably their polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines, which are commonly used for genetic testing – for coronavirus testing.

One expert told Sky News that if enough laboratories used their PCR machines for Covid-19, they could test everyone in the country.

“These PCR machines are in every university and commercial lab in Britain so I’m sure you’ve got 14,000 of them,” said Professor Julian Peto, a cancer epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Mr Fischer, who founded the stock photography company Alamy, owns a non-profit medical research lab in Oxford, called SBL.