By Ben Kerrigan-
Free COVID-19 tests will end this week in England, and will only be available to the most vulnerable, as cases continue to rise across most of the UK.People scrambling to order the last available lateral flow tests are being discouraged from ordering packs when they try to access them online.
Free LFTs will be scaled back from 1 April, with only the over-75s and over-12s with weakened immune systems having access to them.
The NHS Confederation have today indicated that health workers may be forced pay around £50 a month for tests, now they are no longer available free. Under the current system, health workers get tested twice a month, though No 10 supported its position on ending free testing in the Uk, by hailing the effectiveness of vaccines in putting the British public in a different position from wher it was during lockdown times.
Downing Street said on Monday that vaccines and therapeutic treatments meant that the country was now in “a vastly different position to where we were when we first started providing free testing” – a programme that is costing the government billions of pounds a month.
Critics have condemned the move as as one prone to disaster.
Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said on Monday that ending free coronavirus testing for healthcare workers is “a disaster”.
Altman told Times Radio that it is “unfair, unkind and just not workable” to expect NHS staff to pay for their own tests.
Staff absences at NHS hospitals in England due to COVID-19 have reportedly risen by 30% week-on-week, the biggest increase since the start of the year due to Covid infections.
An estimated 23,127 staff at hospital trusts in England were absent every day last week, either because they were ill with the virus or self-isolating, according to figures.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that some 200,000 children are off school in England due to COVID, before promising more details on rapid testing this week when the free provision is stopped.
He said further information about lateral flow tests will be set out on Friday – when mass free testing will end.
According to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, around one in 16 people in private households in England – or 3.5 million people – are likely to have had COVID in the week to 19 March.
Wales has experienced its third successive jump in infections, with the figure up from 125,400 people, or one in 25, to 192,900 people, or one in 16 – a record high.
The figures on Scotland are not encouraging- Covid-19 cases are reported to have been on the high for eight weeks in a row. There has also been an increase in the number of people who have contracted the virus from one month to another, up from 376,300 (473,800) the previous week.
Scottish figures suggest an increase in the number of coronavirus patients in Scotland’s hospitals to have risen to 2,360 people needing care, Scottish government figures show.
Northern Ireland is the only UK region that is seeing infections falling for a second successive week, and cases now stand at an estimated 108,700 people, or one in 17, down from 130,600 people, or one in 14, according to the ONS.
But the overall data is further evidence that the virus is becoming rapidly more prevalent in the UK and come as the number of people in hospital with the virus continues to increase.