ROYAL TREATMENT
Brits encouraged to get Covid test by ‘using royals to promote programme with wristbands for negative patients’
THE Royal Family should lead a campaign to promote mass testing while Brits should wear wristbands to prove they don't have coronavirus, Government advisers have claimed.
The Behavioural Insights Team made the recommendations ahead of the rollout of the Operation Moonshot mass testing programme - a scheme that will be rolled out in 67 local authorities following last week's pilot event in Liverpool.
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The report suggests that the royal family, cabinet, parliament and local government should be enlisted as supporters of the mass testing project.
BIT, which is partly owned by the Cabinet Office, recommends that the government should distribute paper wristbands to all people who tested negative for easier recognition of whether they can enter venues.
The report said the Government should make a serious effort to offer incentives for people to get tested, if they wanted the scheme to be successful.
The team recommended that volunteers working at test centres should get perks such as free parking, free public transport, and free entry to museums and galleries.
Powerful slogans such as "Save Christmas" should be used to encourage people to be tested as it would create a spirit of national resistance, it's claimed.
The advisers made the recommendations after watching Slovakia roll out its mass testing programme, which saw 3.4million citizens swabbed in one weekend, reports.
Those who tested negative were given a paper certificate and were not required to follow the stay-at-home order.
Around 38,000 positive coronavirus cases were identified during the scheme - almost 14 times more than the number being picked up by the country's test and trace system.
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Rapid Covid-19 testing is set to be rolled out in 67 towns and cities, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the Commons on Tuesday.
Local authorities on the list will have the capacity to test 10 per cent of their population.
He said: "I am delighted to say 10,000 of these tests will now be sent out by NHS Test and Trace to over 50 directors of public health as part of our asymptomatic testing strategy.
"I want to thank all directors of public health for their support and efforts over the past months to help us tackle this virus, bring it under control and get the country back to what we love doing."
Around 600,000 tests will be sent out to people across the country over the next few days to try and pick up more asymptomatic cases.
The first round of swabs will be followed up with weekly packages of more tests.
It's part of the mass testing regime that has already been deployed in Liverpool.
And NHS staff will be tested twice a week to try and protect patients and employees.
"(Rapid) tests allow us, from today, to begin rolling out twice-weekly testing for all NHS staff, which will help keep people safe when they go into hospital, and help keep my wonderful colleagues in the NHS safe too," Mr Hancock said.
The rapid tests could also be used to try and let families and friends visit care homes, and they could even be used to cut self isolation times.
Scientists say mass testing could halve the R-rate, the number of people each Covid victim goes on to infect.
Coronavirus deaths in the UK passed the grim milestone of 50,000 on Wednesday as 595 fatalities were recorded in the past 24 hours.
A devastating 50,365 lives have so far been claimed by the deadly bug - while 1,256,725 people have tested positive for the virus after 22,950 new cases were recorded.
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There are 14,196 patients in hospital in the UK, with 1,219 on ventilators.
There are more Covid-19 hospital patients in hospital in the north-west and the north-east of England, than there were during the first wave of the pandemic.
In the north-east and Yorkshire, 2,999 patients were reported on November 9 - 432 above the first-wave peak of 2,567.
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In the north west, 2,948 hospital coronavirus patients were confirmed on November 9 - 58 higher than the first-wave peak of 2,890, according to the Government's coronavirus dashboard.
New stats for England show infection rates in the north remain significantly higher, with just one southern city in the top 50 virus hotspots nationally.
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