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Boris Johnson’s exorbitant Operation Moonshot massive cleanup project is destined to ‘fail miserably’ and could accelerate the spread of Covid-19, leading experts warned today.
The £ 100bn plan, championed by outgoing chief aide to the prime minister Dominic Cummings, is designed to reopen swaths of the economy by cleaning millions of asymptomatic people every day from coronavirus.
But a panel of scientists says it will divert essential funds from the already overburdened NHS and Britain’s beleaguered contact tracing scheme, which “urgently needs improvement.”
Moonshot is based on rapid tests that give a result in minutes, but lose between 25 and 50 percent of coronavirus cases, which could give people false confidence to mix with vulnerable people and spread the disease even more. .
Experts from universities in Newcastle, Birmingham, Warwick and Bristol raised the alarm about the project’s dangers today, as Number 10 goes ahead with pilots of the plan in 66 local authorities.
They described it as the ‘most unethical use of public funds for screening’ they have ever seen and claimed it had the potential to ‘really do a lot of harm’.
The panel said it was revealing that the detection of the Covid-19 population had not been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
Ministers have bought millions of £ 5 coronavirus rapid test kits, which are manufactured by the American company Innova (pictured) and give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ result in a quarter of an hour.
At a virtual press conference today, Professor Allyson Pollock, clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University, said: ‘The evidence for screening is not there.
‘The evidence around the tests is poor and weak at the moment, and needs to be improved.
“We are arguing that the Moonshot program should really be stopped, until the profitability and value for money of any of these programs is well established.”
She called for the operation to be scrapped and the funds to be invested in NHS Test and Trace, which fails to find four out of 10 close contacts of Covid-19 patients.
Professor Pollock added: ‘I am concerned about increasing testing and tracking without fixing it first.
The government has already spent £ 12 billion and Operation Moonshot would account for 70 per cent of the total annual NHS budget. We need contact tracing to work.
“The other potential harm from screening is that it diverts money from the people who need it most.
“The capacity of the health service was drastically reduced before Covid and that must be rebuilt. This £ 100bn could be spent much better.
‘[Population-wide] screening needs to be stopped and properly thought through while testing and contact tracing are improved. ‘
Dr Angela Raffle, Public Health Consultant and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol, said: “ When I heard about Moonshot’s proposals, this seemed to me the most unethical proposal for the use of public funds or for the detection he had made. never seen. ‘
He highlighted several issues, including the short time period in which people must be tested, that planning and infrastructure are not in place, cost, and that proposals have not been vetted by screening experts.
“I am concerned that ministers or whoever might wake up one morning saying, ‘Let’s spend £ 100bn on this’ and not analyze it,” he said.
“It would be like building a Channel Tunnel without asking the civil engineers to look at the plans.
“Even if it could work the way we’re doing, it’s bound to make sure it will fail miserably.”
He added that the proposals could also lead to a “chaotic struggle to have evidence, which we do not know will bring any benefit.”
Dr Raffle is a consultant to the UK’s national screening programs at Public Health England, advising ministers and the NHS on all aspects of screening populations for all conditions.
He claimed that the body was not consulted about the project and when he offered to help, the government said “no, thank you.”
The first city-wide trial of tests is underway in Liverpool, where its 500,000 residents are offered regular tests, regardless of whether they have symptoms.
Hundreds of thousands of tests have been carried out in parts of Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, the West Midlands and several London boroughs, as part of the campaign to eradicate asymptomatic cases.
The pilots are using “lateral flow” tests carried out by the American company Innova that give a result of “yes” or “no” in a quarter of an hour.
But data from the government’s own testing of the £ 5 kits found that they can miss half of all infections when used in real-world settings rather than in hospitals by a trained nurse.
Professor Jon Deeks, a biostatistician at the University of Birmingham, warned that they could be “dangerous” if Britons who test negative see that it is a green light to visit elderly grandparents.
He said Number 10 had conducted 13 studies to evaluate the Innova tests, but cautioned that “they don’t tell us how well the tests will work in practice.”
This is because most of the tests were conducted in a laboratory, with trained medical personnel administering the tests.
And 11 of the 13 tests did not compare lateral flow results with more accurate PCR tests to verify that the rapid devices did the correct result, according to Professor Deeks.
Of the two trials that compared the tests, one saw a trained nurse test hospitalized patients with Covid-19 and the other was conducted by an untrained volunteer at a PHE testing center who followed written instructions.
The latest study was intended to give an indication of how accurate the tests would be if administered by a soldier, which is currently being done on the pilot in Liverpool.
When the tests were performed by a nurse, the test captured on average 73 percent of people infected with Covid-19. But in the test center, it was only 58 percent accurate.
There are plans for college students to take one of the tests before the end of the term so they can go home and spend Christmas with their parents.
But Professor Deeks said, due to the false negatives: ‘It’s certainly not an adequate way to make sure we have a safe Christmas and it could do a lot of damage.
‘You still have to think that you potentially have it. Therefore, you will not rule out the fact that Covid will be taken home; It will slow it down, but it won’t stop it. ”
He added: ‘The arguments that we are hearing, and these have been made by the Prime Minister, that this test can differentiate between infectious and non-infectious is not supported by any data. There is no data to prove this. ‘
The Innova kits are what is known as lateral flow tests. Ultimately, they work in the same way as gold standard PCR tests, amplifying the genetic material and then looking for signs of the virus.
Lateral flow uses a different type of enzyme that allows the test to be run at one temperature, making it faster but less accurate.
PCR uses another type of enzyme and the process must be repeated at different temperatures in a laboratory, which means it takes longer but is more accurate.
Despite mounting concerns, Number 10 is moving forward with Operation Moonshot, announcing plans last night for two new ‘megalabs’ to be released by the end of the year.
The massive testing sites, based in Leamington Spa and Scotland, will double the UK’s coronavirus testing capacity to more than a million per day. Each will be able to process 300,000 tests a day.
The latest data in the government’s coronavirus dashboard shows that testing capacity on Sunday was an estimated 519,951, with 379,955 tests actually processed.
This increased capacity will mean faster turnaround times for results, according to Health Department officials, while each facility will have a workforce of up to 2,000 once fully staffed.
In addition to processing Covid-19 tests, these new diagnostic facilities will be used for critical illnesses, such as cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
A recruitment drive for the Leamington Spa laboratory has already started and a campaign will start in Scotland shortly, the government said.
