U.K. introduces ‘test and trace’ plan to isolate virus

LONDON — After two months of lockdown and more than 37,000 coronavirus deaths, Britain on Wednesday rolled out a countrywide “test and trace” program — an enormous undertaking meant to help isolate the virus and return the country to some sense of normality.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also hopes the program, which starts in England on Thursday, will shift the nation’s attention away from a furor over allegations his top aide flouted the government’s own lockdown rules with a cross-country trip.

The test and trace project involves 50,000 workers, including 25,000 contact-tracers hired to track down the contacts of anyone who tests positive for COVID-19. The goal is to isolate the infected before they spread the virus. Similar programs are being introduced in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Johnson acknowledged that Britain was unprepared to mount such an operation when the outbreak first hit. Britain’s official coronavirus death toll stands at 37,460, the highest total in the world after the United States.

While people could potentially be fined for noncompliance, Dido Harding, the former telecoms executive appointed to head the test and trace program, said she hoped that would not be needed.

Though the public has responded better than politicians expected to the directives to stay home, a scandal involving Johnson’s top aide has prompted fury among people who have already sacrificed personal freedom for the public good.

Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings drove 250 miles from London to his parents’ house in northeast England while he was falling ill with suspected COVID-19 — despite stay-at-home rules that the government had imposed on the rest of the country.