Britain plans mass testing in war against COVID-19
A photograph taken in London on Wednesday shows the manual from a UK Government COVID-19 antigen home test kit. The antigen test determines whether you are currently infected with the novel coronavirus.
Britain plans to bring in regular, population-wide testing for COVID-19 so it can suppress the spread of the virus and ease restrictions that have crippled its economy without triggering a second wave in one of the worst-hit countries in the world.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government was trialing a range of new, faster tests that can give instant results and hoped to roll them out toward the end of the year.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has been criticized by political opponents and health experts for being too slow to go into lockdown and in rolling out testing to know how far the virus had spread.
Britain now has the highest death toll in Europe, at more than 50,000, and the deepest economic contraction of any major advanced economy.
“The mass testing, population testing, where we make it the norm that people get tested regularly, allowing us therefore to allow some of the freedoms back, is a huge project in government right now,” Hancock told BBC Radio.
He said the country’s research laboratories at Porton Down were trialing new saliva tests that do not need to go to a laboratory, so they can deliver faster results.
“There are new technologies coming on track which we are buying and testing now,” he said. “We’ll ramp it up certainly over the remainder of this year.”
Widespread testing is seen as one way to reopen the economy, which suffered a 20 percent contraction in the second quarter.
And it is expected unemployment will soar when the government ends its huge job subsidy program in October. “Hard times are here,” Finance Minister Rishi Sunak said last week.
Britain has a daily testing capacity of more than 335,000.
