Experts have doubted Boris Johnson’s latest moonshot testing plan

Boris Johnson indicated that the regular processing of millions of rapid tests, able of producing results in as little as twenty minutes, could be used to distinguish people who are negative, as well as intensify the crackdown on the spread of the disease.

By spring, the government expects to have a general mass testing program up and running, and will be piloting the moonshot testing in Salford from October – stated Johnson.

Despite this, scientists have questioned whether the moonshot test proposal is feasible because the government is already struggling to reach its existing test targets, and the rapid testing technology is still at an early age.

Johnson stated: “Our plan, this moonshot that I am describing , will require a giant, collaborative effort from government, business, public health professionals, scientists, logistics experts and many, many more. There are a number of challenges. We need the technology to work. We need to source the necessary materials to manufacture so many tests. We need to put in place an efficient distribution network, and we need to work through the numerous logistical challenges.”

Chair of the British Medical Association’s Medical Academic Staff Committee and Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, Dr David Strain, stated: “The mass testing strategy is fundamentally flawed in that it is being based on technology that does not as yet, exist. Existing technology has been demonstrated to miss up to one third of people who have COVID-19 in early disease. After a second test forty-eight hours later, we still miss over a quarter of people. It has been suggested that those who test negative are in some way less infective, but that is by no means certain. Mr Johnson’s assertion that we will be able to use this as a method to get people back to normal is rather premature.”

Research fellow in the Science Research Policy Unit, the University of Sussex Business School. Dr Joshua Moon, stated: “The current crisis in testing capacity just goes to show that the UK government’s assessments of testing capacity are not necessarily all that accurate. Given this, how can we even trust that this moonshot will actually happen in practice? A negative result could be that the individual is truly negative and therefore not infectious, or it could be that the individual is infected but early in the incubation period so isn’t testing positive yet, or it could be that the test itself didn’t capture enough viral material on the swab or saliva to test positive. In only one of these cases should the person be moving around as normal.”