I'll try once more ...
> The reasons for the gap include:
> ◾some people have to be retested because their test was void
> ◾to check whether someone who had previously tested positive was now negative
> ◾to double check a negative test if someone still appeared to be infected
These are the reasons we all expected and knew about, when we see "not each test is a separate individual" on the news each day.
What we didn't expect and didn't know about was that if one individual, in one test session, has two swabs and gets one result, that can be counted as two tests - not one. Since they seem to do two swabs as a matter of course, the number of individuals tested is never going to get close to the test capacity. It's rather as I said in my first post at 11:33 ... I'm more interested in how many people were tested than how many tests were done [which, given the way it's reported, has become an almost meaningless stat]. What I'd really like to know is the results of the tests, things like:
p people were tested
q currently had coronavirus
r had the antibodies
s neither currently had coronavirus nor had the antibodies