Mass vaccination against COVID should mean an end for mass testing for COVID.
You would’ve thought so. Due to mass vaccination (73% of the UK fully vaccinated) there should be to need to test the population. But it seems as though the government has other ideas.
Several contracts have recently been published on the governments contract finder website that indicate mass COVID testing is here to stay for the foreseeable future and may even increase in the short term.
One contract talks about producing 250,000 test kits per day increasing to a possible 500,000 in Winter. The contract is worth £130 million, is due to expire June 2022, but has the option to extend for another 12 months for the same value again.
Another contract awarded for test consumables for PCR test kits is set to last until March 2022. It’s not insignificant either, being worth £401 million.
A third contract to provide consultancy services was signed on 28 June and ends 28 February 2022. An attached document outlines the nature of the work: “The Services will form part of a large and complex programme to shape and deliver mass population testing across the UK”.
Looking at another contract which has an identical description and runs from April to September 2021, it looks as though this is indeed the continuation of an existing mass testing programme.
What does all this mean?
It seems to indicate that contrary to expectations, and despite the success of the government’s vaccination programme with its high uptake which logically ought to negate the need for testing, mass COVID testing of the population will continue this Winter.
This is in distinct contrast to what the government, various authorities and experts told us last year when the vaccine campaign was getting under way.
In December 2020, as the vaccination campaign started the Prime Minister said: “As we do all this, we are no longer resting on the mere hope that we can return to normal next year, in the spring, but rather the sure and certain knowledge that we will succeed and together reclaim our lives and all the things about our lives that we love.”
“Return to normal next year, in the Spring”. Yet here we are in the middle of summer, with Autumn fast approaching, and the mask mandate has only recently ended, and now it looks likely that testing will be continue in Winter despite most people being vaccinated and yet more who will receive boosters.
This is the same coronavirus kits which first raised suspicions after goats and pawpaw’s tested positive in Tanzania and the same used for when Ice cream tested positive for coronavirus in China. And earlier this year, school children found a devious method to get out of school, using cola to create false positive Covid tests.
It was also last October when Lord Bethell said the Government was exploring technology which will allow people to conduct a test every day. ‘It means that you are enabled – and enabled is the key word here – to go to the pub, to go to the theatre, to do things where social distancing is problematic,’ Lord Bethell told the Conservative Party conference.
It is clear, yet again, that this government has no intention of letting us get back to normal to “reclaim our lives” as Boris said we would last November.
