NHS Test and Trace has ordered all regional and local test sites across the country to scale back their operating hours, and stop offering a service after 6pm.
Officials said they had taken the decision because “demand for tests reduces significantly” in the evenings.
It comes after the scheme was lambasted as an “eyewatering” waste of taxpayers’ money which failed in its main objective to “help break chains of Covid-19 transmission and enable people to return towards a more normal way of life”
The £37 billion budget – equal to almost a fifth of the entire health service budget – was used to hire more than 2,000 consultants, employed on average rates of more than £1,000 a day.