Now that we seem to have two Covid-19 vaccines that work, do we really need Operation Moonshot, the government’s programme to test 10 million people a day by early next year?
It’s a poignant question, not least because of the extraordinary sums which appear to have been committed to it: briefing documents leaked to the BMJ in September suggested that it could cost £100 billion, which is close to the annual NHS budget in England. What would be the point of testing the entire population of Britain once a week if the virus was being controlled by a vaccine?
The cost aside, there is growing medical opinion against the idea. The latest criticism appears in a letter to the BMJ today from Mike Gill, a former regional director of public health and Muir Gray, visiting professor at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Sciences, University of Oxford.
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