24-hour COVID test results as soon as possible: Johnson

LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday he wanted coronavirus test results to be returned within 24 hours as his government prepares to launch a new tracing system to try to contain the spread of COVID-19.

“This has gone from a complete standing start to a huge operation and so I don’t want to give you an exact deadline to when we will get down to 24 hours, but that is plainly the ambition and we will do it as soon as we can,” he told lawmakers.

The COVID-19 test and trace service will launch in England on Thursday to help the loosening of lockdown measures.

“We are also saying from tomorrow, and this is an important development, that there is a new test and trace operation which will change people’s lives and which will require a great deal of thought and compliance but which I think will be worth it for the whole nation,” Johnson told a committee of lawmakers on Wednesday.

The service, which will have a taskforce of 50,000 people to test and identify the contacts of anyone who tests positive for the virus, will not initially include the app that is key to finding anonymous contacts. The government did not give a date for when the smartphone technology would be deployed.

It is pertinent to note here that United Kingdom’s death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose by 412 to 37,460, health officials said.

Including deaths from suspected cases of COVID-19, Britain’s toll is over 47,000.