Boris Johnson’s drive to use mass so-called moonshot testing to control the spread of Covid-19 will fail unless stringent quarantine rules are relaxed, senior government advisers have warned.
Ministers have been told that plans to use millions of 15-minute tests to screen large parts of the population for asymptomatic Covid-19 risks being undermined by the existing test and trace system.
In particular they have been told that the “ridiculous” policy requiring the contacts of people known to have infections to self-isolate for two weeks or face a £10,000 fine risks undermining public acceptance of the mass testing initiative.
Instead ministers should use the new capacity to relax the quarantine rules and allow those who have come into contact with a known Covid-19 case to
