U.K. Warned About Danger of Cutting Back on Covid Testing

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s chief medical officer and other scientists warned that it’s crucial that they are able to keep tabs on Covid-19, raising concern about the government’s plan to cut back on free coronavirus tests.

In the early days of the pandemic, “we didn’t know how much disease there was and where” and gaining testing abilities “transformed things,” Chris Whitty said at a conference on the future of Covid Thursday. He expressed concern about “keeping the ability to survey to understand where we are.” 

The comments came on the day Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government plans to end the availability of free tests. It’s already scrapped all pandemic restrictions, but is now seeing a fresh increase in virus infections. Daily cases are averaging above 80,000, more than double the rate at the start of March.

Others at the conference, including Peter Openshaw, an immunologist at Imperial College London, and Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, also said tests remain vital at this stage in the pandemic.

“The key to epidemiology is data, and maintaining that data stream is absolutely vital,” Openshaw said at the event, organized by the Royal Society of Medicine. “Letting testing go -- I’m quite concerned about that,” Sridhar said. 

Hospital admissions for Covid have also risen, though they remain below the peak, according to government figures. In London hospitals, the number of patients testing positive has increased to the highest in almost two months.

Most people in England will have to pay for virus tests from Friday. It’s part of a shift in many countries to “living with Covid” policies, with governments showing no intention of reimposing health and social restrictions even amid the new wave of cases.

As testing is scaled back, the World Health Organization has warned that this will limit its ability to track the virus and the evolution of variants.

The latest increase in cases is being driven by the highly infectious omicron BA.2 subvariant. Changes in behavior may also be accelerating transmission, with more people returning to normal life, traveling, and working less from home. 

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