oh. End of free lateral flow tests as country told to live with CovidJust a pondering, does anyone know offhand where else in the world is still doing lateral flow tests free* for everyone & whenever you want one (if in stock)?
(* at point of use obvs)
I can’t see how they can get away with charging for LFTs. It’s massively unfair and people who can’t afford it will just give up testing
It will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.oh. End of free lateral flow tests as country told to live with Covid
eta i see we've already done this, and agree its deeply unsurprising, we were something of an outlier for doing this one thing well.
oh. End of free lateral flow tests as country told to live with Covid
eta i see we've already done this, and agree its deeply unsurprising, we were something of an outlier for doing this one thing well.
A senior Whitehall source said: “I don’t think we are in a world where we can continue to hand out free lateral flow tests to everybody for evermore. It’s likely we will move to a scenario where there is less testing but where we have a capacity to ramp it up if necessary, such as in the winter.”
The former vaccine minister, Nadhim Zahawi, interviewed on Sky's Trevor Phillips show, was asked about ending free LFTs.
He said he had seen the article, has no idea where it has come from, it's not something he recognises, it's not something being discussed, and it's certainly not going to happen anytime soon, otherwise why would an extra 420 million LTFs have been ordered this month alone.
Oh well then if a tory minister says it ain't so.
Depends what you mean by the short term.So, you believe an anonymous source is suggesting something is going to happen soon, which they haven't actually done, rather than at some point in the [distance] future?
It's clearly not going to happen in the short term.
Yep. If my twitter is anything to go by, the reaction to the mooted idea in the times is extreme and very loud pushback. It would be a wildly unpopular move. I'd be curious to know how evenly the use of LFs is spread across the population though. I don't imagine theres any way of finding out if conservative voters use fewer of them.It's also worth remembering that the government has frequently floated "ideas" like this, and waited to gauge the response before implementing them.
BBC giving it airtime this morning, its just another Gov leak a bit better disguised than usual...testing the waters. Whether or not its going to happen sooner or later is dependent on a few things of course.So, you believe an anonymous source is suggesting something is going to happen soon, which they haven't actually done, rather than at some point in the [distance] future?
It's clearly not going to happen in the short term.
Yep. If my twitter is anything to go by, the reaction to the mooted idea in the times is extreme and very loud pushback. It would be a wildly unpopular move. I'd be curious to know how evenly the use of LFs is spread across the population though. I don't imagine theres any way of finding out if conservative voters use fewer of them.
Depends what you mean by the short term.
As SpookyFrank points out 420 million tests is not much more than one box each, so that's about one months supply if people do two tests a week on average.
It's also worth remembering that the government has frequently floated "ideas" like this, and waited to gauge the response before implementing them.
I'm not saying that free tests will definitely end next week or next month, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are at least scaled back earlier than you seem to think is likely.
Yeah, there was a report on Look North the other day apparently where a reporter couldn't get hold of any.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that this utter bunch of venal cunts might make getting free LFTs difficult to find so people are relieved to be able to buy them for a small fee.
It is really. If there was a conspiracy to restrict supply there would have to be lots of people involved and it wouldn't be possible to keep it from leaking.
OK, the point I was attempting to make is that the fact they've ordered 420 million extra tests to cope with recent issues doesn't in itself act as any guarantee that they won't scale back free testing in the coming months, which is what you appeared to be suggesting.He said 420 million extra tests.
People seem to have short memories, this first came up in the Guardian back in mid-November, it was based on a discussion document for a 'exit strategy' at some point, possibly as early as April, but that was before omicron arrived. These sort of documents are regularly drawn-up and many, probably most, end-up going nowhere.
UK officials have compiled ‘Covid exit strategy’ from April – report
No 10 sources say ministers had not seen leaked plan to wind down testing and self-isolationwww.theguardian.com
OK, the point I was attempting to make is that the fact they've ordered 420 million extra tests to cope with recent issues doesn't in itself act as any guarantee that they won't scale back free testing in the coming months, which is what you appeared to be suggesting.
..and you're just as wrong saying it the second timeI said in my first post it's a non-story ATM.
..and you're just as wrong saying it the second time
The vast majority of other countries don’t offer free tests on demand to whoever wants them, we are an outlier, nhs related obvs, but I think they’d like to scale back and or start charging like everywhere else as soon as public outcry measurements allow.Depends how many months, at some point, when/if we get on top of this bastard virus, scaling back testing will/may make sense, but we are clearly nowhere near that ATM, no one knows what the timescale will be, so nothing to get excited about, as I said in my first post it's a non-story ATM.