Richard Dobbs

The case for mass testing

Picture credit: Getty

This morning, Matt Hancock claimed on the Today programme that the government is now working as fast as it can on developing a mass testing programme, which is ‘incredibly important’ if we want to ease coronavirus restrictions.

The health secretary is right to finally focus on mass testing. So far, the UK’s performance has been relatively poor in fighting the pandemic, and we are currently expected to come out among the worst in the two-by-two matrix comparing Covid-19 performance on deaths and forecast economic impact:

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While some of this is structural – we have an economy that is more exposed to the service sectors than others and our population is more overweight, more diabetic, travels more on congested mass transport and lives more in multigenerational housing – we, citizens, businesses and the Government, have not played Covid-19 well to date.


Written by
Richard Dobbs

Richard Dobbs was a director of the McKinsey Global Institute. He is currently serving as a non-executive director on several boards, but writes in a personal capacity.

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