Michael Gove has suggested China was to blame for the Government's slow response and the lack of mass testing for coronavirus in the UK. 

Chinese secrecy slowed the UK's response to the coronavirus crisis, Michael Gove swiped today.

The Cabinet minister said although the first case was identified before Christmas, the communist state had not been 'clear about the scale, the nature, the infectiousness'.

The dig came amid mounting criticism of the government's approach, including delays in ramping up testing. 

The Mail on Sunday revealed today that ministers and officials are furious about China’s campaign of misinformation, attempts to exploit the pandemic for economic gain and animal rights record.

There are even Cabinet calls to reverse the decision to let Huawei build large parts of the new 5G telecoms network. 

Told on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that ministers had known about the coronavirus threat since before Christmas, Mr Gove said: 'We have been increasingly the number of tests over the last month. 

'It was the case that the first case of coronavirus was established in December last year.

'But it was also the case that some of the reporting from China was not clear about the scale, the nature, the infectiousness of this.'

Mr Gove said the government had 'always followed the scientific advice', pointing out it had published much of the information it been given by experts.

He announced that the UK tested 10,000 people for coronavirus yesterday for the first time. 

But he declined to give a timescale for when all frontline NHS staff will get access to checks - after small-scale trials were launched, with just 800 a day expected initially. 

There is also still no clear idea when the UK will be conducting the 25,000 tests a day promised by Boris Johnson.

Chinese secrecy slowed UK's response to coronavirus says Gove

Ministers and senior Downing Street officials has warned there will be a ‘reckoning’ with China over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak. PIctured is a Wuhan railway station as inbound train services resumed yesterday

UK might need 180m coronavirus tests 

Britain might have to carry out 180million coronavirus tests to defeat the deadly disease, Tony Blair suggested today.

The former PM said 'mass testing' is vital and it will need to carry on for a long time, as even if the lockdown can be eased there is a threat of 'resurgence'.

He said 'virtually everyone' will need to be tested for whether they have coronavirus.

And Mr Blair warned that might need to happen two or three times to combat any return of the outbreak. That could potentially mean in the region of 180million individual tests. 

Cabinet minister Michael Gove confirmed this morning that the number of UK tests per day has reached 10,000. 

At that rate it could take more than 50 years to check the whole 66million-strong population three times - although Mr Gove stressed that the numbers are being urgently increased. 

The comments came as former Tony Blair warned that nearly everyone in the UK will need to be tested - perhaps two or three times each. At the current rate of checks that could take 50 years. 

There are also claims that it is 'unfair' senior politicians such as Mr Johnson and health secretary Matt Hancock have been formally diagnosed with the disease, while NHS workers are left in limbo. 

The UK's coronavirus death toll rocketed by 260 to 1,019 yesterday, the biggest increase yet.  

One senior Government source said: ‘Of course, the only priority now is to deal with the crisis, but everybody knows that there has to be a reckoning when all this is over.’

Writing for The Mail on Sunday, former Tory Party leader Iain Duncan Smith says: ‘For too long, nations have lamely kow-towed to China in the desperate hope of wining trade deals. But once we get clear of this terrible pandemic, it is imperative that we all rethink that relationship and put it on a much more balanced and honest basis.’ 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and other experts have been warning that mass checks are crucial for keeping the spread of the killer disease under control.

Countries like South Korea and China have been praised for their wide-scale testing regimes, which seem to have helped limit cases.  

However, the UK shelved efforts to test everyone with symptoms on March 12, when the response moved into a 'delay' phase.

Instead people who thought they had the illness were urged to self-isolate unless their conditions became so severe they needed medical help. 

Amid criticism, Mr Johnson then declared just under a fortnight ago that there would be a big expansion of tests from under 5,000 a day to 25,000.  

Speaking on Sky News' Sophy Ridge programme, Mr Gove said he could confirm the number of tests per day had now hit 10,000..

'We're going to move to get that up to 25,000 a day and we're doing all that we can to increase and to accelerate that, and I hope that we will be able to test as many frontline workers at the earliest possible stage,' he said.

'We've been working, as I say, with scientists, with the big players in providing medical supplies and drugs, like Boots, and others, in order to increase the number of tests that we have.'  

But asked when the checks would be available to all front line NHS staff he merely said: 'I hope that we will be able to test as many frontline workers at the earliest possible stage.' 

Mr Blair warned that a 'very large' proportion of the entire population will need to be tested for coronavirus - potentially two or three times.

He said: 'Your risk, obviously, is as you start to ease the lockdown, how do you then deal with any resurgence of the disease? This, of course, is what they're now dealing with in China and South Korea, and elsewhere.

'Unless you have that testing capability that you can apply at scale, and by the way when I say mass testing I mean I actually think you will need to get to the point where you've got the capability, and I assume we're preparing for this now, of testing literally a very large proportion of the entire population.

'You may have to do those tests two or three different times because you need all the time to be able to track what's happening with the disease, to learn where, for example, there may be a surge or a hotspot of it, and take immediate action.'

Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan, a doctor who has been working in a hospital during the crisis, said she was 'really disappointed' that NHS staff were not currently being tested for the disease.

Boris Johnson (pictured taking a meeting by video conference yesterday) now faces Cabinet calls to reverse his decision to let controversial Chinese firm Huawei build large parts of Britain’s new 5G telecoms network

Will they ever learn? Chinese markets are still selling bats and slaughtering rabbits on blood-soaked floors as Beijing celebrates 'victory' over the coronavirus

By George Knowles For The Mail On Sunday

Terrified dogs and cats crammed into rusty cages. Bats and scorpions offered for sale as traditional medicine. Rabbits and ducks slaughtered and skinned side by side on a stone floor covered with blood, filth, and animal remains. 

Those were the deeply troubling scenes yesterday as China celebrated its 'victory' over the coronavirus by reopening squalid meat markets of the type that started the pandemic three months ago, with no apparent attempt to raise hygiene standards to prevent a future outbreak. 

As the pandemic that began in Wuhan forced countries worldwide to go into lockdown, a Mail on Sunday correspondent yesterday watched as thousands of customers flocked to a sprawling indoor market in Guilin, south-west China. 

Here cages of different species were piled on top of each other. In another meat market in Dongguan, southern China, another correspondent photographed a medicine seller returning to business on Thursday with a billboard advertising bats – thought to be the cause of the initial Wuhan outbreak – along with scorpions and other creatures. 

The shocking scenes came as China finally lifted a weekslong nationwide lockdown and encouraged people to go back to normal daily life to boost the flagging economy. Official statistics indicated there were virtually no new infections. 

The market in Guilin was packed with shoppers yesterday, with fresh dog and cat meat on offer, a traditional 'warming' winter dish. 

'Everyone here believes the outbreak is over and there's nothing to worry about any more. It's just a foreign problem now as far as they are concerned,' said one of the China-based correspondents who captured these images for The Mail on Sunday. 

The correspondent who visited Dongguan said: 'The markets have gone back to operating in exactly the same way as they did before coronavirus.

'The only difference is that security guards try to stop anyone taking pictures which would never have happened before.' 

The first coronavirus cases were traced to a market in Wuhan but the outbreak was kept silent by officials for weeks and whistleblowers were silenced, including 33-yearold Dr Li Wenliang, who later died of coronavirus. 

Dogs and rabbits are butchered and sold at a meat market in Guilin, southwest China, on Saturday, 28 March 2020 despite infection concerns about this type of market  

Now, after a dramatic fall in infection rates within China, the Beijing government is promoting conspiracy theories that the outbreak did not begin in China at all. 

A discredited story, shared widely on China's Weibo social media platform, claims coronavirus was first detected in Italy in November. 

Meanwhile, Chinese officials have promoted groundless conspiracy theories that the US Army brought the virus to its shores. 

The only Chinese city still under lockdown yesterday was Wuhan, but yesterday even the restrictions there began to be lifted, with high-speed trains allowed to operate.