The U.K. has plans to step up its COVID-19 testing to the point that they’ll be doing 10 million a day by early 2021. Slugged “Operation Moonshot,” the government plans to increase the number in increments between now and December 2020.
The tests will take place in medical facilities, workplace and community events, with the ultimate goal of creating “immunity/virus-free passports” that would be issued on-site through a phone app before you could enter your workplace, physician’s office or sporting event, for example.
Broken down, each day they would test:
- 200,000 people with symptoms
- 100,000 without symptoms in local areas to suppress outbreaks
- 250,000 people without symptoms in the NHS and care homes
- 100,000 a day through national prevalence studies.
To achieve the 10 million a day, the U.K. government plans to partner with drug companies such as GSK and AstraZeneca, which have the ability to build such a large-scale operation, along with other commercial organizations. The Moonshot documents obtained by The BMJ say the U.K. government is justifying the testing program by saying it’s the “only hope for avoiding a second national lockdown before a vaccine, something that the country cannot afford.”
SOURCE: The BMJ September 11, 2020