Boris Johnson
Concerns are being raised across the UK over Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s “Operation Moonshot” plan for mass coronavirus testing.
Scientists and health professionals across the UK are raising doubts about “Operation Moonshot”.
Mr Johnson is hoping that
millions of Covid-19 tests – including some giving results within minutes – could be processed daily through “Operation Moonshot.”
However, experts say there are issues with laboratory capacity for current tests, while the technology for more rapid tests “does not, as yet, exist”.
Again, the British Medical Journal has reported that leaked memos show “Operation Moonshot” could cost £100 billion.
After announcing that gatherings in England are to be restricted to six people from Monday, Mr Johnson says the UK government was “working hard” to increase testing capacity to 500,000 tests a day by the end of October this year.
According to him, “in the near future” he wanted to start using testing “to identify people who are negative – who don’t have coronavirus and who are not infectious – so we can allow them to behave in a more normal way, in the knowledge they cannot infect anyone else”.
He says “We believe that new types of test which are simple, quick and scalable will become available. They use swabs or saliva and can turn round results in 90 or even 20 minutes.”
“Crucially, it should be possible to deploy these tests on a far bigger scale than any country has yet achieved – literally millions of tests processed every single day.”
According to him, a mass-testing programme could be ready by the spring and could help the UK to avoid a second national lockdown.
By Melvin Tarlue