Coronavirus: a test strategy that failed

Sarah Boseley (‘Absolutely wrong’: how UK’s coronavirus test strategy unravelled, 1 April) refers to the government’s mathematical modelling taking precedence over the basic, tried-and-tested public health approach. Do we never learn? It was mathematical modelling that developed “products” that led to the banking crisis of 2008.

Despite the years of austerity there are resources in local government that we have also failed to use. There have been environmental health officers (EHOs) up and down the country desperate to help their public health colleagues – for example, with tracing contacts after testing (if there had been any). They would also have been more effective at getting messages out to the public, particularly those most vulnerable or living in multi-occupied houses. Many EHOs have been left twiddling their thumbs for too long when their whole reason to exist is to protect public health.

Their professional body has at least stepped up, not least to provide a guide to safe shopping during the Covid-19 pandemic. That is a sad reflection on our lack of preparedness, despite the warnings.
Dr Stephen Battersby
Vice-president, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health

• It is a common view that the British government moved too late to institute a policy of testing everyone who has had recent contact with known coronavirus cases. However, there are several English local authorities in which there are fewer than five known cases and case density in the local population is very low.

Using the most recent current figures, these include Hull, Blackburn, Stoke-on-Trent, Telford, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Darlington. Testing all those who have had contact with the known cases in these areas should be a strictly limited task. Once done, subject to movement restrictions in and out, productive activity in these areas can commence or recommence, engineering facilities put to use in producing items in critically short supply – and they can once again, after many years, become an engine of growth.
Prof Michael Waterson
Department of economics, University of Warwick

• Re your article (Just 2,000 key NHS staff have been tested, UK government admits, 1 April), there are no more tests. There are no more ventilators. There’s no more PPE. At some point these statements will – and should – become the equivalent of the infamous “There’s no money left” note left by Liam Byrne at the Treasury in 2010 – a note which condemned Labour to the role of financially reckless fall guys of the austerity narrative.

But there’s one key difference here: there always was money left, as evidenced by the government turning on the spending taps so freely to alleviate the impact of this current crisis. In contrast, medical equipment is finite. So, to be ill-prepared for a pandemic, even though you’ve gamed for such a scenario well in advance – whether that’s down to precious time wasted tinkering with a now discredited scientific nudge theory or an unwillingness to spend money in advance born of ideological intransigence – is nothing short of criminal negligence. To hold those same people to account for these failures is not inappropriate politics; it’s what any responsible and accountable democracy should do.
Colin Montgomery
Edinburgh

• Matt Hancock says the UK will do 100,000 coronavirus tests per day by the end of April (No 10 seeks to end coronavirus lockdown with ‘immunity passports’, 2 April). In other words, Boris Johnson’s government is promising to deliver a specific result on a fixed date by relying on technology that doesn’t exist yet. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Trevor Fenton
Dundee

• In addition to the government ads saying “If you go out, you can spread it. People will die” (Stark warnings part of government’s new coronavirus messaging, 1 April), shouldn’t we have “If we don’t test our healthcare workers they can spread it. They and other people will die”?
Vivienne Anderson
Leeds

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