Test and trace 'live' tomorrow as PM again defends Cummings
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The UK government has formally launched the country’s test and trace programme with Scotland earlier announcing that its own scheme would start from tomorrow (Thursday, May 28).
The announcement was made by health secretary Matt Hancock at today’s Downing Street briefing shortly after Prime Minister Boris Johnson was grilled by MPs.
Mr Johnson had been called to appear before the liaison committee, whose members come from the 32 Commons select committees, amid the mounting outrage over his advisor Dominic Cummings breaking the lockdown.
Among them was Scottish MP Pete Wishart who said the Prime Minister had been “quite brave to sacrifice the popularity and stability of the government just to stand your man. You have done something I have never seen in 20 years in the House – you have managed to unit a nation in condemnation and indignation.
“The most worrying thing is that 65 per cent of people say it makes it less likely that the public will now follow lockdown rules. Surely, Prime Minister, no man is more important than keeping this nation safe?”
“Your point about the message, I respectfully disagree – the best way for me to clarify the message so people understand what we need to do next is that we must all move on and focus on what we are doing.”
About 10 minutes after the committee concluded, Mr Hancock told the nation that test and trace would be in place across the UK from tomorrow – earlier First Minister Nicola Sturgeon revealed that Scotland’s system would go live in time for easing the lockdown.
However, he warned that testing and training must become a new way of life, saying: “NHS test and Trace is a big part of the answer to that question means, it means we can start to replace the national lockdown with individual isolation for those who've been in contact with the virus and local action where it is necessary.
“The concept is simple. First, through testing we hunt down the virus finding out who is infected right now and I use ‘we’ very deliberately because we all have our part to play. This is a national effort we all have a role. If you have symptoms, you must isolate immediately and get yourself a test.
“Yesterday 2013 people tested positive and the next step is that through contact tracing, like detectives, the NHS clinician from NHS test and trace and the person who tested positive work together to identify the possible movements of the virus, where it has been, who else might have been infected.
“Then we isolate those contacts, who might have been infected so the virus is unable to spread and we break the chain of transmission. Think of it like this – the virus exists only to reproduce, that is its sole biological purpose to make as many copies of itself as possible.
“If we can thwart that purpose, we can control the virus and ultimately defeat it. We must all follow the NHS test and trace instructions because this is how we control the virus and protect the NHS and save lives.
“Now we've got the number of new infections each day right down and the number of new cases of those who tested positive is small enough that we can be in touch with everyone who we need to
“Of course, testing the capacity is critical to making this work. We now have a capacity for 161,000 tests a day and because of that capacity I can announce that we are expanding eligibility yet further.
“From tomorrow, we're expanding eligibility for testing to include the under-fives so that now every single person who has symptoms of a virus can get a test no matter their age.”
