Is Pendle proof that mass testing can backfire?

And are they getting positive results from people who are perfectly healthy and may not even be infectious? Our Health Editor visits – and raises troubling questions...

IT’S Wednesday lunchtime on Market Street, the main shopping parade in Nelson town centre. Pensioners potter about, unbothered by the steady drizzle. Determined-looking mums hurry around, pushing buggies. Most are in masks. There are one- way markers stuck to the floors of all the shops and, of course, ubiquitous queues. So far, so ordinary. I’m here because Nelson is, right now, Covid-19 central – on paper at least.

Earlier in the month, this modest former mill town in Pendle, Lancashire, was flagged for ‘additional guidance’ by the Government, owing to rising infections (on Friday, the Government confirmed the region had the most cases in England).

Residents are barred from socialising with anyone outside their household, and can only use public transport when necessary – although businesses, for now, remain open.

But what’s behind this apparent surge? Could one explanation lie in the fact that, since early August, Pendle and Preston councils have been urging residents ‘who do not feel in any way unwell to get a Covid-19 test – just to be sure’?

Abdul Razaq, Lancashire’s Director of Public Health, even said ‘asymptomatic testing’ was a ‘vital part of our overall public health strategy in terms of identifying those residents who may actually carry the virus’.

And that strategy was in full swing on Market Street when I visited last week.

‘Free Covid-19 tests!’ yells a council worker from behind a trestle table at bemused passers-by. I join the steady stream of locals waiting to see one of two nurses who, in full PPE, are carrying out nose and throat swabs, right there on the street corner.

Nelson resident Lynn, 70, tells me it’s the second time she’s dropped by the mobile testing site, while out shopping. She’s not suffering any symptoms but adds, cheerfully: ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t have it. My last test was a month ago, and it came back negative, but am I today?’

NEXT in line, Lisa, 39, tells me she’s having a test ‘ because everyone else is. Why not? I’m doing my bit’. Nora, 59, who’s also about to have a test, seems less gung-ho. Since the pandemic struck, she’s felt ‘worried’ and ‘scared’. She hopes having the test will provide some ‘peace of mind’.

What if it’s positive? ‘I don’t know,’ she admits, looking faintly shocked from behind her face mask. ‘Do you think it might be?’

Twenty- year- old Naseem, was ‘just passing by, so I thought, why not?’ He hadn’t been all that worried – ‘I’ve heard it’s something like a lung problem?’ – but had lost his job in McDonald’s when it closed in March, which made life pretty dire. He’s working again, in a supermarket. Did anyone explain to him that, should the test come back positive, he’d need to isolate for up to ten days and anyone he lives with quarantine for two weeks?

Or that, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced last week, that ‘Covid-carriers’ compelled to stay at home would be paid just £182 over 14 days for their trouble?

‘What? I have to go.’ I take that as a no, then.

Back in March, as the pandemic hit, social media was awash with stories of desperately unwell Britons, isolating at home, but unable to get a confirmed corona diagnosis. Even at the peak of the outbreak, only those ill enough to be hospitalised (along with medical key workers) were tested. What a difference five months makes. Since late May, the NHS Test and Trace service has been rolling out: currently, the network includes 73 drive- through testing sites, 36 walk- through sites, 236 mobile units, home-testing options, and five UK laboratories.

It has, until now, focused on testing those who develop symptoms – a fever, new cough, or loss of sense of smell. But over the past month, The Mail on Sunday has learned that screening initiatives such as the one I attended in Nelson have been popping up in town centres across the UK.

We’ve discovered local councils in St Helens, Slough, Sheffield, Leicester and Rotherham have issued similar instructions for residents to get tested ‘even if you don’t have symptoms’.

These pilot schemes, launched oddly quietly, aim to test the healthy – or at least, seemingly healthy. Indeed, not one of the dozen or so Nelson residents who were tested while I was there were unwell.

None ever had been, or even knew someone who’d had Covid-19.

Pendle Borough Council worker Mary – an expert in disaster management – tells me they’re just one of a number of similar sites across the region, screening at least 100 people a day. The vast majority aren’t ill.

On Thursday, Britain recorded more than 1,500 new corona cases – the most since June.

Are many of them symptomless people picked up via screening programmes such as these? At present, it’s impossible to find out.

In April, the Government faced criticism for reporting the number of tests ‘carried out’ as an indicator of how many people had the virus. It transpired that each hospital patient typically had at least three tests – and that they were also counting t ests posted out but possibly never returned in a bid to meet Hancock’s infamous 100,000test-a-day promise.

NHS Test and Trace now provides a constantly updated, publicly available report giving the number of tests every day (about 190,000 – with capacity for almost twice that number) and numbers of positives, by borough. But what isn’t reported is whether or not a person who has tested positive is symptomatic, or not. They also don’t give us the number of tests done by region. If they did, it could tell us clearly whether Pendle’s ‘surge’ in cases was actually due to their screening initiatives picking up asymptomatic cases.

So why are they testing people who aren’t even ill? Well, in roughly 80 per cent of cases, corona causes only a mild illness. And a growing body of evidence suggests that many – possibly half of all those infected, particularlythose of working age – simply carry the virus, without it causing them any problems.

And, as restrictions are eased across the country, it’s these ‘hidden’ cases that the Government believe are key in perpetuating the spread of the illness. By picking them up, isolating them, and quarantining their close contacts, we might just be able to beat the virus into submission, or at least avoid a winter resurgence – and an economywrecking second lockdown. Or so the theory goes.

As Hancock said last week: ‘To prevent a second peak and keep Covid-19 under control, we need robust, targeted intervention where we see a spike in cases.’

But is it going to work? A growing number of scientists have grave doubts. Critics have claimed such initiatives are ‘ unscientific’ and