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Scientists and healthcare professionals have raised questions about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “moonshot” plan for mass coronavirus testing in the UK.
The prime minister expects millions of Covid-19 tests, including some with results in minutes, to be processed daily.
But experts say there are problems with the lab’s capacity for current tests, while the technology for faster tests “doesn’t exist yet.”
The BMJ reports that it has seen leaked notes that the plan could cost £ 100bn.
Speaking after his announcement that meetings in England will be limited to six people starting Monday, Johnson said the government was “working hard” to increase testing capacity to 500,000 tests per day by the end of October.
And he said that “in the near future” he wanted to start using the tests “to identify people who are negative, who do not have coronavirus and who are not infectious, so that we can allow them to behave in a more normal way, in the knowledge of they can’t infect anyone else. “
Johnson added: “We believe that new types of tests will be available that are simple, fast and scalable. They use swabs or saliva and can get results in 90 or even 20 minutes.
“Fundamentally, it should be possible to implement these tests on a much larger scale than any country has achieved so far, literally millions of tests processed every day.”
Johnson said a massive testing program could be ready in the spring and could help the UK avoid a second national lockdown.
But Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the board of the British Medical Association, said it was unclear how the so-called Operation Moonshot would work, given the “huge problems” currently seen with the laboratory’s capacity.
‘Flawed’ strategy
Currently, between 150,000 and 200,000 tests are processed per day, but the test capacity is reported to be 350,000 per day. This includes antibody tests and tests used to estimate how widespread the virus is.
Earlier this week, a director of the government’s testing and tracing program in England issued a “heartfelt” apology for problems with the testing system, explaining that the labs, not the test sites themselves, were the “point critical”.
Dr. Nagpaul added that the idea of opening up society based on people who test negative for the virus should be “approached with caution” due to the high rate of “false negatives” and the possibility of overlooking those who are incubating the virus. .
Dr. David Strain, a senior clinical professor at the University of Exeter and chair of the BMA medical academic staff committee, expressed concern about the technology being discussed.
“The mass testing strategy is fundamentally flawed, as it relies on technology that, until now, does not exist,” he said.
“The prime minister’s suggestion that this will be as simple as ‘getting a pregnancy test’ that will give results in 15 minutes is unlikely, if not impossible, on the time scale he was suggesting to get the country back on track.”
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England’s deputy chief medical officer said the success of Operation Moonshot depended on how it was managed.
Dr. Jenny Harries told ITV’s Robert Peston: “Technically, there are several different tests available. The difficulty is in trying to evaluate them all and work them into one program.
“We want to get back to as normal as possible and any opportunity to do that through a new testing program or using a different testing technology is clearly a good thing to pursue, but it is not as simple as doing it.
“So I think it’s both the test and the way it’s handled and used that we have to work on.”
The UK has drawn up plans to eventually carry out as many as 10 million Covid-19 tests a day early next year, at a cost of more than £ 100 billion, which is close to the total annual budget for NHS England, according to a report in the BMJ.
The new rapid tests will be piloted with the public attending indoor and outdoor venues in Salford starting next month.
The government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said the technology must be “carefully tested” and it would be “completely wrong to assume this is a success.”
The plans for the massive tests come as Johnson said the UK “must act” to avoid another lockdown as virus cases rise in England.
It established a new “rule of six”, restricting gatherings to a maximum of six people, imposed by police capable of imposing fines or making arrests, after the UK reported more than 2,000 new coronavirus cases for the fourth day in a row.
Johnson said the rules had “become quite complicated and confusing” and that the government was “simplifying and strengthening” them after comments from police and the public.
But Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer said the new meeting rules reflected that “poor communication was a big part of the problem” with the spread of the virus.
The new “rule of six” means:
- Social gatherings of more than six people in England will not be permitted by law from Monday 14 September.
- The new rule applies to people in private homes, indoors and outdoors, and places like pubs, restaurants, cafes, and public outdoor spaces.
- Applies to all ages
- The rule does not apply to schools and workplaces, to people living together or in the same support bubble, or to weddings, funerals, and organized team sports.
- The full list of exemptions also includes protests and political activities subject to “strict risk assessments”, jury duty and emergency assistance.
- People who ignore the police could be fined £ 100, doubling with each offense up to a maximum of £ 3,200.
