Is the Liverpool mass-testing scheme a gimmick?

The revelation that both Pfizer and Modena have created seemingly effective and safe Covid vaccines that could be here by December is surely the first bit of good news 2020 has brought us. But we are, of course, nowhere near yet out of the woods. Even if a vaccine gets regulatory approval by early December, all our resources and logistics will have to be focused on procuring, delivering, and then monitoring its roll-out.

Boris Johnson himself has urged caution about the Pfizer vaccine, saying ‘there is a long way before we have got this thing beat’. But while the PM is displaying a healthy degree of realism about the challenges of deploying a vaccine, is the government still in a make-believe world when it comes to mass-testing gimmicks?

The latest scheme is the ‘moonshot’ testing programme in Liverpool, which aims to distribute rapid tests to the entire area’s population. Johnson has said that if the pilot is a success, millions of tests could be distributed elsewhere in the country before Christmas to help local authorities drive down transmission in their areas and this could enable us to defeat the virus by spring.