covid testing

I worry about the implications of this story for those rural communities with high populations of vulnerable people who are also distant from secondary and some case primary health care. It says:

Come the end of March, the lights will dim on the UK’s Covid epidemic. Despite infection levels rising, cases will plummet, as free lateral flow and PCR tests are stopped for the majority of people in England, with other countries in the UK also set to reduce free testing in the coming weeks and months.

But while the government has argued it is time to manage Covid as we do other infectious diseases such as flu, scientists have warned ending community testing could put vulnerable people at risk and undermine efforts to understand the virus.

From 1 April, symptomatic testing will be free only for certain groups, such as hospital patients and social care staff. However, the Department of Health and Social Care has yet to give details on which other groups will be eligible.

After a winter of “flow before you go”, the change in policy seems dramatic.

Tackling Covid has undoubtedly been expensive: free testing, contact tracing and research studies do not come cheap. And, as the government points out, there is a high level of immunity across the country and the Omicron variant is less severe – the threat to most people is very different now to what it was at the start of the pandemic.

However, the end of free community testing means most individuals will be in the dark as to whether they have the virus, unless they are able to pay for a test, meaning they may go into public places while infected, passing the virus on to those they would otherwise have tried to protect. The situation is likely to be worse in more deprived communities.

While the success of vaccines and other approaches in tackling the severity of Covid, as well as less severe variants, may suggest that is not the problem it once was, rising infections have once again put significant pressure on the NHS. Experts warn even hospitalisations with Covid, rather than because of it, can cause logistical difficulties, exacerbate existing health problems and put vulnerable people at risk.