Boris Johnson’s Coronavirus Response Fails Better

Governments are seldom good at radically changing existing systems, much less inventing new ones and then ramping up delivery of the resulting solution in a short time span. That’s why countries caught flat-footed when the coronavirus hit have paid in lives. And yet a rare bright spot in the U.K.’s otherwise dismal coronavirus record was announced by Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Friday, in the manner of a child with failing grades pulling off his first A.

It was pretty evident that Hancock’s job was the on the line. In early April, as Britain moved briskly up the epidemiological curve, Hancock pledged that by the end of the month the country would be testing 100,000 people a day. At the time, the government was struggling to test one-tenth that many people, while Germany was already testing 70,000 a day comfortably. There was every reason to doubt he would succeed. With death toll now above 28,000, Britain couldn’t afford a failure.