Mass weekly Covid-19 testing of population to be trialled in England

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Mass weekly Covid-19 testing of population to be trialled in England

Jeremy Hunt says UK should embrace repeat testing as route to more ‘normal life’

Jessica Elgot
@jessicaelgot
Wed 2 Sep 2020 22.00 BST

The UK government is to trial routine weekly Covid testing of the population as part of preparations to head off a possible winter second wave, as the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt called for such tests to become the norm.

Matt Hancock said the government was committing an extra £500m to scale up testing capacity and launch community pilots trialling the effectiveness of repeat testing in schools and colleges, as well as in the population as a whole. It will also ramp up the trials of a new test kit that it is claimed can provide results within 20 minutes.

The boldest measure will be a new community-wide trial in Salford, launching imminently, to assess the benefits of repeat population testing. Initially, the pilot will focus on a specific high-footfall location in the city with retail, public services, transport and faith spaces.

Hunt, who now chairs the health select committee, said the UK should embrace mass population testing. “I would really want to expand the whole testing programme so we can almost get to a point where we are testing the whole population every week,” he said.

“As an intermediate step I’d want to have expanded it by now so that we’re at least testing all NHS staff and all teachers every week, so people can be absolutely confident when they’re using hospitals, when they’re sending their kids to school, that they are coronavirus-free zones,” he said.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/02/mass-weekly-covid-19-testing-of-population-to-be-trialled-in-england

[sprinkleeninow]

1. I think our testing is far more superior.

[Layzeebeaver]

2. My wife just received a letter from Imperial College London

It indicated that she was selected to receive a home anti-body test.

This is proposed as a means to understand the spread of the virus and to determine the span of infection that has already occurred.

I wouldn't be surprised if this morphs into a regular nationwide testing regime.

I hypothesise this assuming the accuracy of the anti-body tests can be established/improved.

[Soph0571]

3. Heh. Them saying it an actually puling it off are two very different things

I'll believe it when I see it from this most incompetent of administrations