‘Mass testing a must to restart international travel’
Former prime minister Tony Blair has called for the UK Government to roll out mass testing for Covid-19 before the end of this year.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Mr Blair said: “If 70 per cent of the cases are asymptomatic, you are not testing those people, they are all false negatives at the moment.
“The people out there who have got the disease, but have got no symptoms yet can still spread the disease are in effect a false negative.
“So, yes, it is true that you will miss some people ... this is where I think the Government has got to change the way it calculates risk. In every single aspect of this, once you realise you’re not going to eradicate the disease, you’re going to have to contain it and live with it at least until a vaccine comes, then you’ve just got to have a sensible risk calculus in every area.
“So, for example, now we’re telling people to go back into pubs, we’re incentivising, quite rightly for the purposes of getting the economy moving, to go and eat out. All of those things are risks.
“I think the way we’re doing the quarantine rules is wrong actually. I think you could cut that 14-day quarantine substantially if you recognise that whatever you do there is going to be a risk, you just have to minimise it.”
Mr Blair said he did not see how international travel could resume again without “regular testing” and that individuals should have bio-ids to present the coronavirus tests they have had.
He said: “If you’re not able to test significantly when you’re trying to get large numbers of people back into a normal routine, then I think you’re going to be enormously inhibited at how you handle the disease. And it’s not so difficult to do.”
Mr Blair added: “We suggest how you might boost and accelerate the development of these on-the-spot antigen tests and then we say at a certain stage you want to move to a ... every person has, as it were, a record of what tests they’ve had, if you like a kind of bio-id which allows them then to present, for example, when you’re travelling – I just don’t see how you get international travel going again unless you’ve got regular testing.”
Mr Blair is among a group of former world leaders who have meanwhile called for action to ensure a generation of young people are not “robbed of their education” due to Covid-19.
The 275-strong group comprises of senior figures also includes former prime ministers Gordon Brown and Sir John Major, as well as economists and educationalists from across the globe. In a letter addressed to G20 leaders, national governments and global financial institutions, the group warned up to 30 million children may never return to school as a result of the pandemic, according to Unesco.
They have also raised concerns that the world’s poorest children have been “locked out of learning” and denied internet access. The former leaders also warned the G20 of the threat of rising child hunger with the loss of free school meals for pupils around the world. In their letter, they wrote: “An immediate concern is the fate of an estimated 30 million children.”