Will Operation Moonshot pass its first test fighting Covid in Liverpool?

Operation Moonshot, the government’s ambitious plan to deploy exciting new technologies to test the entire population for coronavirus infection, launches in Liverpool on Friday. Yet, even as the army arrives and testing sites are set up, questions are being asked about the accuracy of the tests and the information people will be given about their results.

Liverpool is the pilot project for ministers’ big vision of weekly testing of the entire population – covering up to 10 million people across England a day. Many people support mass testing, which could allow a return to workplaces, socialising and going to the theatre and football matches without the fear of spreading infection.

But in the drive to bring about a return to normal life as quickly as possible, the government appears to be endorsing technologies that have limited or questionable accuracy data.

Great hope is being invested in saliva tests, but there is no good published data yet, and it is clear they will often miss low levels of the virus in people who have no symptoms. The main one to be offered to the general public in Liverpool is the Innova test, which Porton Down has approved as effective – but only using nose swabs. No data has so far been published on its effectiveness with saliva.

The test is a lateral flow device, which looks and works like a pregnancy test, and is made in China by Biotime Biotechnology for the US company Innova Medical. It is supplied in the UK and Europe by a micro-company called Tried and Tested, which has no office and operates out of a house in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

The government has signed a contract worth £138m with Innova without a tender, as is permitted in the emergency. “The lateral flow tests were identified as strictly necessary to meet the demand to scale up the mass testing programme in the UK,” says the contract.

British companies say they are perplexed. “I’m surprised and disappointed as a UK manufacturer and having worked in the industry for some time. There are lots of people with tests available in the UK at the moment,” said Christian Stephenson, the chief development officer at the Manchester-based Medusa 19.