A leading academic has warned the UK's test-and-trace system risks being overwhelmed in the wake of the planned wholesale lifting of Covid restrictions in England this month.
Jon Deeks, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, told The Guardian at least 660,000 PCR tests would be likely to be needed each day to discover 100,000 daily infections this summer – the number Health Secretary Sajid Javid predicted may result following the Government's dropping of restrictions.
“If we get to 100,000 cases a day, the capacity of our testing system is going to be breached, particularly when we build in the recommendation for testing contacts,” Mr Deeks said. “Plus, some of the labs are being shut down, such as the turnkey lab here at the University of Birmingham.”
Positive tests in England were up 71% in the last week of June, the highest number since early February.
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