When the government announced that anyone with a cough or a temperature had to stay home for a week, it was framed by the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser as a policy designed to slow the peak of the coming coronavirus epidemic.
And it should help to do that.
But there was another decision taken that many doctors tell me was more important, and was in their view retrograde – which was that anyone with mild symptoms who does not require hospitalisation would not be tested for it.
Those with symptoms are not even being asked to voluntarily click on a button on a website or send in a text to announce that they may have the virus.
This means the government has little precise data on where the virus is, and whether there are burgeoning hot-spots that should be ring-fenced and cut off from the rest of the country, to delay its spread.
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