Really interesting @MattHancock interview on #r4today, lots covered a few reflections I think worth making.
On the headline of £500m for mass testing - this is potentially really important for helping us get back to normal, but two points really need emphasising:
1 - false positive rates crucial to understand when testing large populations with low prevalence and no symptoms- has real issues for how people might react to +ve results. @mgtmccartney @carlheneghan @deb_cohen all explored this
spectator.co.uk/article/how-ma…
2 - testing negative will only tell you that you aren't shedding the virus at that moment in time. It doesn't mean you won't be infectious the next morning so if you've been in contact with a case, you will still likely need to isolate.
And on testing roll out - a lot of 'operational challenges' described. This shouldn't be surprising, it's really hard - a new national programme. Therefore, suggest the repeated 'game changing' language of DHSC press-releases could be toned down to something more realistic.
On Test & Trace - it's apparently one of the best on the planet. I'm sure many other countries would contest this, but we just need to look at our own data to see how we can improve.
And finally, on the app - quite remarkable suggestion that one of the companies involved (apple? google?) blocked the app's initial roll out. Does anyone know more about this?
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