A 15-minute test to show if someone has been exposed to coronavirus could be made available to millions through high street chemist shops and online delivery services, British health officials have said. The British government has bought 3.5 million antibody test kits and they are being evaluated this week to determine if they show reliably that someone has had the coronavirus and probably has some immunity.
The test could enable those who have recovered from the virus to return to work with little risk to themselves or others.
"The key thing for us to do is evaluate – are these tests accurate enough to be used by the general public? If they are incredibly accurate, we will work out the quickest way to release them. If they are not accurate, we will not release any of them," chief medical officer Chris Whitty said at a press briefing in Downing Street.
“I do not think, and I want to be clear, that this is something that we’ll suddenly be ordering on the internet next week. We need to go through the evaluation, then the first critical uses, then spread it out from that point of view. We need to do that in a systematic way.”
Increased capacity
Prof Whitty said that tough social distancing measures introduced in recent days and increased capacity in hospitals meant that the National Health Service (NHS) would probably be able to cope with the peak of the crisis over the next few weeks.
If everybody sticks to staying in your household unless absolutely essential, this gap will probably be manageable
"The measures that have been announced – that all of us have to do, if the NHS is going to get through this without exceeding its capacity – and the fantastic work by my colleagues in the NHS to increase supply, that is the way we will narrow this to the smallest possible gap over the next three weeks," he said.
“We do think that if everybody sticks to staying in your household unless absolutely essential, this gap will probably be manageable by the NHS. But we cannot guarantee that and nobody that is sensible would wish to guarantee that.”
Volunteers
More than 400,000 people have signed up within 24 hours as volunteers to support the NHS by driving patients and goods, shopping for vulnerable people in self-isolation and staying in touch with those who are lonely. The response was far ahead of the target of 250,000 set by health secretary Matt Hancock on Tuesday evening, which has now been reset to 750,000.
Manchester and Liverpool are to provide rough sleepers with accommodation during the crisis, providing 1,000 rooms for people sleeping rough or in shared accommodation. They will also be provided with food and hygiene packages as part of the scheme, which will cost £5 million (€5.5 million).
