Prognosis

Johnson’s ‘Moonshot’ Moves Closer as U.K. Virus Toll Hits 50,000

  • New study finds rapid turnaround checks accurate and sensitive
  • Official warns upward trend in Covid deaths likely to continue
A Covid-19 testing center in Liverpool, U.K. on Nov. 6.Photographer: Anthony Devlin/Bloomberg
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Boris Johnson’s “moonshot” plan to use mass coronavirus testing to unlock Britain’s economy overcame a key hurdle on the same day the U.K. became the first country in Europe to record more than 50,000 deaths.

A study found so-called lateral flow tests -- which do not require laboratory equipment and give results within 30 minutes -- are accurate and sensitive enough to pick up cases where people don’t have symptoms, Public Health England and Oxford University said Wednesday.