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The UK government has been criticised over the slow pace of the build-up of testing capacity for Covi 19. Boris Johnson mentioned the figure of 250,000 tests a day at the start of the crisis, a median of a paltry 1,600 tests a day was reached in March and as this piece is being written experts believe that Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April will not be met.
This has been a result of a shortage of testing kits, but also not enough laboratory capacity to process the tests. In comparison with other countries where testing has been better managed like Germany and South Korea, the UK has not managed to check the spread of the disease and is not able to produce reliable figures as to how many people have contracted the virus.
As a result of the task of testing, frontline workers in the UK have also been put at serious risk and their families. Those workers feeling ill have had to self-isolate, despite the fact that they may not have Covid 19, thereby seriously depleting the workforce. There is also the problem of asymptomatic cases who are in work and actually spreading the virus amongst their colleagues and people they are supposed to be looking after.
As the UK seems to have reached the peak of Covid 19 deaths, testing is surely one of the most important considerations to the Government as it deliberates on a strategy of how to move from the present situation of lockdown.
Frontline workers who will need to be tested regularly. This is a moral obligation to those working in NHS hospitals and care homes for the elderly to provide such tests to look after these people and their families.
Teachers – if parents of schoolchildren are to be able to return to work, then teachers must have greater accessibility to regular testing than at present. There is also the problem of those vulnerable learners and the overall educational impact of children staying at home for such a long period that needs addressing.
The government would also benefit from having a much more accurate picture of who has the virus and will be able to analyse local, regional and national trends much more thoroughly before deciding on their intervention.
Fast food drive-throughs could be re-purposed to become testing centres with a laboratory attached for the speedy processing of test results.
I know for a fact that my home city of Cardiff has 21 fast food drive-through outlets. This works out at 1 per every 2.57 square miles; therefore these outlets are instantly accessible for the local population.
Those attending these new test centres would fill in their details at the point where customers would ordinarily order their food. They would then proceed to the testing area where food is normally handed over.
Burger King boasted in 2019 that the average wait time for a customer at one of their drive-throughs in the UK was 235.48 seconds. Imagine the number of tests that could be carried out if these new testing centres could match these times. Also filling in a simple form – either online or at the centre would cut the red tape and bureaucracy that seems to have hindered efficient testing in the UK to this date.
Paul Nurse, the English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Nobel Prize winner, has recently criticised the government for not engaging with the smaller laboratories in the UK to help with processing tests. Why can’t such laboratories now be centred inside the restaurants of these drive-through units to process the tests being so speedily carried out?
There is no reason why the concept of fast food cannot become fast testing to meet the new demands of a post corona virus UK.
If this idea is piloted successfully in the UK, I am confident it will become a global phenomenon. These fast food companies have operated in globalised markets for decades, now it is time to use their global infrastructure to our advantage.
Environmentally – the drive-through test centres will be more convenient for people, centres in their locality. This means they will not have to travel very far and could even attend test centres on foot or by bicycle.
Socially – the fact that the tests will be carried out at such speed and without the present red tape and bureaucracy means that more of the public will attend tests centres. Boris Johnson’s target of 250,000 tests a day might actually be achievable.
Economically – with more of the population being tested, it should allow the government to open businesses and workplaces that much quicker, confident that they have a reliable set of figures. This should mean the economy returning to pre-Covid productivity much sooner than anticipated.
The test centres would also provide work for people from the catering and hospitality industries who could be re-trained to work at their previous places of employment.
