Mass Covid Testing And Sequencing Is Unsustainable - Here's How Future Surveillance Can Be Done

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Several European countries are drastically reducing the number of COVID tests performed. Sweden has already restricted free tests to healthcare staff, social care workers and clinically vulnerable people, and only if they are symptomatic.

The UK government has announced that free tests for symptomatic and asymptomatic people in England will end on April 1, except for tests for social care workers and those most at risk.

The motivation to put an end to mass testing is partly financial. Current levels of testing come at a staggering cost of around %C2%A32 billion a month to the UK government. Though, another motivation is to send a message to the public. By scrapping mass testing, governments intend to signal that the pandemic is coming to an end and that normality is returning.

Billions of COVID tests have been performed globally. Half a billion results have been reported to date in the UK alone, with many more lateral flow tests remaining unreported. Such intensive diagnostic testing of asymptomatic people is unprecedented and has dramatically changed society's attitude towards respiratory viruses.

National dashboards displaying daily case numbers have become a defining feature of the pandemic, and many people have adopted COVID testing as a routine precautionary measure.

But the epidemiological impact of mass testing is somewhat mixed. Extensive testing is most useful to reduce transmission when coupled with the ability to trace contacts of those testing positive, which rapidly becomes impossible when the number of infected people is high, as it has been constantly in the UK since the summer of 2021.

There is no clear-cut relationship between the number of tests performed by countries and the COVID cases, hospitalisations and deaths they experience.

The volume of coronavirus genome sequences produced during the pandemic is equally unprecedented. The number of coronavirus genomes deposited in Gisaid, the shared, global database of viral genetic sequences, has now reached 8.5 million, with over 2 million from the UK. This is more than for any other virus, including the flu, which has been routinely sequenced for decades.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.