Scientist calls for weekly coronavirus tests for health workers

Sir Paul Nurse has argued that all health and care staff should be routinely tested for coronavirus once or twice a week.

Giving evidence to the Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee, Nurse, one of the UK’s most eminent scientists, said that frequent, routine testing was essential to ensure the safety of health and care staff and give the public the confidence to go into hospitals.

His colleagues at the Crick Institute contacted Downing Street in March and wrote to Health Secretary Matt Hancock in April emphasising the importance of regular systematic testing of all healthcare workers, including not only frontline doctors and nurses but support staff, ambulance drivers and other healthcare providers.

He told the Committee: “At the height of the pandemic, our own research – and of course that only backs up what’s been done elsewhere – is that up to 45 per cent of healthcare workers were infected. And they were infecting their colleagues … reinfecting patients, yet they weren’t being tested systematically.”

He also discussed the high numbers of people were testing positive without symptoms: “Again, our own research has shown that nearly 40 per cent of healthcare workers at that time were infected but had no symptoms. So this was a real, major failure. In the healthcare environment, we weren’t providing proper protection. And it’s important.”