The prospect of a return to normal has wide appeal, especially at a moment Britain is about to implement a new round of social distancing measures, prompted by rising coronavirus infections.

But many public health experts are dubious. Some say the plan is not a moonshot, but a Jules Verne fantasy.

Such massive population-wide testing for disease would be unprecedented. Though some countries have deployed mass screening during this pandemic, “Operation Moonshot” would go where no public health campaign has gone before — and yet Britain doesn’t have the best track record on coronavirus testing.

Skeptics add that the sort of rapid, cheap tests the project would need are still in development, or have not yet been approved for mass screening in Britain, and could produce so many false positives and negatives as to create chaos.

The Moonshot planning documents acknowledge: “Delivering testing at the scale and level of ambition set by the prime minister is likely to mean developing, validating, procuring, …continued .
[Source: Washington Post]