An incoherent approach to controlling Covid-19

The recent approach to controlling Covid-19 transmission in England seems particularly boneheaded: the recent local “spikes” were entirely preventable by a proper system of testing, tracking and tracing, identifying contacts of individual cases and locking them down; this system is just not in place, and no macro-statistic of total tests undertaken will substitute for it. This is what “local measures” should mean, not targeting huge swathes of the urban population.

Second, the measures recently adopted are incoherent to the point of absurdity – I can go out with friends for dinner, but not visit my mother? The danger here is lack of credibility, exacerbated by a complete inability to enforce such parochial restrictions.

Third, the current family distancing is likely to have a disproportionate effect on morale. We still desperately need a robust testing and tracing system, administered through general practice and local public health services, not the over-centralised, ineffective (and privatised) testing stations we currently rely on. We need not just tests but a coordinated testing system with fully shared information, based on a firm target of zero transmission. The government just doesn’t get it.
Philip Barber
Consultant respiratory physician, Manchester

• The “premature rush”, as your editorial (31 July) states, to relax the lockdown rules is the “real problem”, not the “tightening of restrictions”, but there is one other unmentioned factor also causing so many lives to be endangered. By claiming that there are signs of a second wave of the pandemic in Europe, and that it could possibly spread to the UK, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings are giving the false impression that the first wave here is under control. With “one in 1,500 people” now having Covid-19, it is clear that it is not, and failing to admit it is another reason for trust in this administration to decrease.

Informing the public of the true situation would improve positive reaction to government announcements, and make a resurgence of coronavirus less likely. It would also entail, however, an admission of failure through wrong or belated decisions, so will not happen. Instead there is now a “whiff of the government blaming the public” for failing to follow the guidance and yet more criticism of European countries. Accepting responsibility and admitting culpability are clearly not in the Cummings handbook for advising prime ministers; attributing deaths to a second wave from Europe evidently is.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool

• Please can Boris Johnson’s government listen to Professor Devi Sridhar (The northern lockdown represents government failure. There is a better way, 31 July). Everything she has ever written, said or tweeted about the current pandemic makes total sense. She is an expert adviser to the devolved Scottish government and the main reason Scotland is pursuing a “zero Covid” approach, with impressive results. She is a terrific communicator too.
Karin Koller
Leicester

• In a rare display of common purpose, Andy Burnham, Nicola Sturgeon and Matt Hancock all supported tighter restrictions on mobility and socialising in the Greater Manchester area. In the background, party politicians as ever continue puerile point scoring over the virus, but I can’t help wondering if this (probably short-lived) consensual approach had been adopted by all political parties across the UK in March, could Covid-19’s terrible impact have been mitigated?
Martin Redfern
Melrose, Roxburghshire