'So stupid': Dominic Cummings leads backlash against plans to scrap key COVID test study

Dominic Cummings has led a backlash against the government after it was reported a key COVID testing study is expected to be scrapped.

Cummings, Boris Johnson's former top aide, said it would be "so stupid" of his former colleagues to scrap the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) weekly infection survey.

The survey is considered the best measure of the spread of COVID infections in the community, with researchers carrying out random tests on people in private households, with the data used to predict the amount of people who have the virus. Hospital data are not applied.

Based on this private household testing, the latest study released on Friday estimated more than 2.8 million people in England had COVID in the two weeks up to 5 February.

With the survey subject to Treasury funding from April, the i newspaper reported it will be scaled down or scrapped altogether.

This would be part of the government's "living with COVID" strategy, to be released later this month, in which mandatory self-isolation for people who test positive will also end.

Cummings tweeted: "Abandoning the ONS random sample survey we set up spring 2020, a global standard setter, is so stupid.

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"Obviously it's Tory policy 'to save money'. Failing to prepare for pandemics also 'saved money', then cost 100s of billions and more than 100k needless deaths."

Dr Duncan Robertson, an eminent COVID modeller from Loughborough University, also wrote: "I haven't seen anyone make a case for scrapping the ONS COVID Infection survey. It obviously saves money *in the short-term*, but I haven't seen *anything* to justify it apart from that.

"Are there *any* other sensible arguments for ending the survey?"

Citing the latest ONS figures, which suggested one in 19 people in England had COVID in the two weeks to 5 February, Dr Nisreen Alwan, associate professor in public health at Southampton University, said: "I can't believe we soon might be losing this amazing source of prevalence data."

Professor Francois Balloux, director of UCL Genetics Institute, warned: "Scrapping the ONS covid infection survey now also strikes me as a terrible idea. I believe it should run at least until the end of 2022."

And Dr Zubaida Haque, executive director of The Equality Trust, cautioned: "If you don’t collect the data, then it’s as though the problem doesn’t exist. *That’s why* one of the most accurate and trusted weekly measurements of #covid in the community [ONS Infection Survey which we’ve had throughout #COVID19] is going to be scrapped by this government."