Mass screening for Covid-19 should be paused because current tests available are not reliable enough, experts have warned. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has held up the Moonshot programme of testing everyone in towns and cities as a way to return to some form of normality.
However four of the country’s top screening experts warn commonly used tests miss many patients who are infectious but have not yet developed symptoms.
One commonly used test might also miss between 25-50% of positive cases, giving false reassurance to people who test negative, they said.
One expert found that if everyone in the country was tested, 400,000 people would get a false positive and be wrongly advised to self-isolate.