What is No 10's 'moonshot' Covid testing plan and is it feasible?

[Northerner]

They call it the “moonshot” – and it is as ambitious as any space adventure.

This is the name given to the government project that aims to ramp up testing to such a scale that it will return the country to some kind of normality. But is it feasible? And what about the cost?

Two internal government documents seen by the Guardian give an indication of the task, and the huge difficulties ahead.

The underlying proposition is simple.

As the documents explain, mass testing of the population on a very frequent basis would allow us all to know who is clear of the virus and allow those people to mix freely again.

The economy and British society as a whole could re-open safely. It would break the chain of transmission. Testing and tracing on this scale would mean the virus would be driven down into such low levels it would be almost eradicated.

One of the documents, titled UK Mass Population Testing Plan, is a briefing memo sent to the first minister in Scotland, which explains it could cost £100bn.

That might be a price worth paying if it worked – however, most of the technology simply does not yet exist. Getting 10 million people tested every day – however quick and simple the process – is a very big logistical ask for a country that has struggled to deliver a few hundred thousand.

What is No 10's 'moonshot' Covid testing plan and is it feasible?

Plan to provide rapid tests for 10 million people a day would be hugely costly –and the technology does not yet exist

www.theguardian.com

Sounds like another of the government's fantasy promises 🙄

 

[Docb]

They say moonshot and I hear moonshine. Anything, even breaking international treaties, to get away from harsh reality.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Getting 10 million people tested every day – however quick and simple the process – is a very big logistical ask for a country that has struggled to deliver a few hundred thousand.

There's also the issue of the error rate. The idea seems to be tests one can take at home, so not likely to be terribly accurate. It's been presented as testing intended to show that you don't have the virus, so presumably they want the false negatives to be low. So likely the false positives will be non-trivial. The current PCR tests are estimated to have false positives of 0.4% (maybe a bit higher); the ONS survey are more careful, and they think what they do is 0.04% or lower.

If you test 10 million a day you're going to have lots of people self isolating (with their contacts also presumably doing so). Or (more likely) not, and then you're wasting your time (and money).

 

[grovesy]

I am not surprised in the least. Though if this includes the test from the company that is in the genes testing business, as I have seen a couple of programmes on them over the last 6 months and I thought they were "oven ready "

 

[atoll]

100 billion would be enough for us all to stay home for the next 12 weeks which would get R down to zero ,we could then have a big party at Xmas by which time we will have a choice of many fully tested vaccines for a mass inoculation program in january

 

[mikeyB]

It’s in line with everything this government promises - a world beating test and tracing App (failed), then a world beating test and trace system built from zero (totally ignoring the well established public health systems locally) and now floundering. And virtually nobody used the emergency Nightingale hospitals. That was money spent when the emergency was at its peak.

Now that all of these have failed in England, how can anyone remotely believe we will see this “moonshot”. It can’t be done, we don’t have enough labs, and the suggestion that we could develop a test that works as quickly as a pregnancy test is absolute moonshine. The technology doesn’t exist, nor does the infrastructure. £100bn isn’t enough, though they could get it by abandoning our illegal nuclear weapons. Buys a lot of hospitals, £100bn. It’s more than enough to electrify all our railways. Or fund UBI.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Yes, most likely they'd get far better value from just fixing the things they've done badly so far. That's straightforward and doesn't require novel technology: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-test-trace-winter-failing-system-second-wave

(It would involve conceding that they'd made mistakes, though, and would involve giving less money to the various private companies they've been using and more to local authorities.)

 

[Northerner]

I'm guessing that you will have to go to the moon to get the test, hence 'moonshot'. Kennedy's real moonshot took almost a decade and the money spent opened up a whole new industry and frontier. Johnson's - if it ever happens - will only be useful as long as there is no vaccine, and is proposed to be with us in a couple of months. As suggested, like with HS2, the money could be far more usefully spent