Covid test runaround

sir – On Tuesday I had a cough and thought I ought to have a Covid test. The website said there was a slot in Bolton, adding that it was terribly busy. Then, before I could complete the booking process, it threw me out.

A little while later, I tried again. There was a slot at Stafford, but it was terribly busy. Before I could complete the booking process, it threw me out.

A little while later I tried for a third time. I was told that it was frantically busy, but a slot was available at Manchester Airport, Staff South Car Park. This time I managed to book.

I arrived to find that, apart from staff, the centre was deserted. Despite my being 45 minutes early, I was seen right away and left about 10 minutes later. As I did so, three vehicles came in, presumably with other attendees.

It looks like there is a problem with the website – which, given the history of government IT projects over the last 25 years, should surprise no one.

John Cooper

Buxton, Derbyshire

sir – If we ran school tests in the same manner as the Covid testing system, we would all be closed down by Ofsted

Tom Bunbury

Headmaster, Papplewick School Ascot, Berkshire sir – The “moonshot” mass-testing plan should be aborted before launch.

In a best-case scenario, a test would have a sensitivity of 90 per cent and a specificity of 99 per cent (incorrectly identifying one person in 100 as positive). Ten million tests a day would correctly identify 4,500 of the 5,000 true positives, at the current prevalence of one in 2,000.

So each day there would be 104,500, positive tests with 100,000 of them being false positives.

Dr John Doherty

Stratford-upon-avon, Warwickshire