Daily Covid testing to help emergency and border staff skip self-isolation
The government has announced another scheme to try and ease the 'pingdemic'.
More daily testing for emergency service workers has been announced to prevent frontline staff shortages.
The scheme – which was initially announced for supermarket workers – will be expanded to 200 more sites in a bid to ease the ‘pingdemic’.
It will apply to staff from the police, fire service, Border Force and some parts of the transport network, according to the Home Office.
A small number of workers in these areas were already able to get an exemption from isolation under a new scheme announced this week.
Ministers previously unveiled a policy which let a ‘very small number’ of critical workers in crucial sectors avoid having to self-isolate for 10 days if their employee applied directly to Whitehall.
But that system only covers a narrow group of workers, and only if they’ve received two doses of the vaccine.
The daily testing pilot goes further, allowing all workers at the sites to opt in to to avoid self-isolation, even if they haven’t had a jab.
The pilot was initially targeted at the food supply chain and is expected to get under way at 15 depots serving supermarkets tomorrow, with a target to get up to 500.
Home secretary Priti Patel said: ‘Daily testing will keep our frontline teams safe while they continue to serve the public and communities across our country.’
More than 600,000 people were told to self-isolate by the NHS app last week, prompting industry leaders in key sectors to warn about a summer of disruption.
Discontent with the government’s self-isolation policy was growing at the weekend as food industry bosses condemned the plans as ‘worse than useless’.
Hospitality leaders warned of a summer of closures, train operators were forced to cut services and shoppers have been with empty shelves in some supermarkets.
There were increasing calls for Boris Johnson to bring forward his wider relaxation of quarantine rules for the fully vaccinated from August 16, at which point double-jabbed people will no longer be required to self-isolate if they are identified as a close contact.
Industry leaders said the move did not include sufficient workers but doctors warned the problem is that the Prime Minister has let the virus ‘rip’ and not the ‘pings’ being issued by the NHS Covid-19 app.
The estimate of the number testing positive – 741,700 – in the week to July 17 is the highest since the week to January 30.
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