Operation Moonshot: Hancock’s latest plan for millions of coronavirus tests could be Britain’s best bet without a vaccine

After struggling to ramp up testing earlier in the year, the United Kingdom has now conducted more coronavirus tests than any other European country, excluding Russia. Today, the government is hoping to boost the numbers even further with a new saliva-based technology that provides test results for Coronavirus on the spot. The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, today announced a £500 million commitment to the project, which he says can provide the resources needed for regular testing in the workplace and the community.  

This would, of course, be a major boon to the British economy, allowing companies to both reassure staff and immediately block new chains of infection. It would also make for a more comfortable experience for members of the public, who currently have to experience the unpleasant ordeal of being swabbed at the back of the throat in the process required for conducting PCR tests.  

Such a prospect has understandably caught the Prime Minister’s imagination – he is said to be “hugely enthusiastic” about the idea, according to the Daily Mail. Johnson recently told a private meeting of MPs that “this will end the need for social distancing,” according to a backbencher present, who added: “He was very animated about it.” 

The plan has been titled “Operation Moonshot”, an indication of just how difficult it will be to implement. The new spit test has not been tested on a large scale. And while a community-wide trial will launch in Salford immediately to “assess the benefits of repeat population testing”, it is unclear when this will provide sufficient evidence to roll out the plan across the country. It is difficult to imagine the process concluding before the end of the autumn. 

The trial could also find some major technical issues, with fears that saliva does not provide sufficient information to guard against false results. A study published this week in the British Medical Journal suggests that the rate of false negatives in the PCR swab tests already being used is about one in five. 

And even if no such problems are found, a cloud remains over the government’s ability to implement this wide-reaching testing regime at pace. The Department for Health has failed to see through similar projects in earlier stages of the pandemic, such as the antibody tests promised in the spring that still haven’t arrived, and the NHSX tracing app which was scrapped after three months of development. 

The overriding aim, however, is clear. Senior figures in government are now convinced of the need for regular community testing on a scale that will require millions of people to be tested every day, including those who don’t display symptoms. It will take a supreme effort to execute it well: this strategy has not yet been successfully implemented in any major nation. But scientists have long believed it to be the only safe way out of lockdown. 

“Getting (everyone) tested once a week would be a good strategy,” said Martin Hibberd of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in May. 

For that reason, the government has also announced it will increase traditional testing capacity to 500,000 a day by the end of October. And, according to the Daily Mail, ministers are hoping to ramp it up to 4 million tests a day by February 2021. If achieved, this would make regular community testing a reality, with enough tests to cover a third of the country every week. 

In the absence of a quick vaccine or extremely effective treatments, the government is still relying on some form of mass testing programme to bring about a semblance of normality. They have judged that this is still Britain’s best bet for avoiding a crippling second wave of infections as the country moves through the autumn and into winter.