Britons Shun Boris Johnson’s Call to Take 2 Covid Tests Per Week
- Only 5.1 million lateral flow tests taken in week to May 12
- Number of weekly rapid tests falls again, government data show
The number of rapid Covid-19 tests being carried out in England fell to just over five million per week at the start of May, despite a government campaign calling on members of the public to test themselves twice weekly at home.
Official data shows that almost 5.1 million so-called lateral flow tests were conducted in the week to May 12, down from a high of 7.6 million in the week to March 17 when schools reopened after the winter lockdown. The rapid test total has fallen for three weeks in a row in England, which has a total population of about 56 million people.
Boris Johnson’s government has long pointed to mass testing as the key to the U.K. getting back to normal, after suffering one of the worst death tolls from coronavirus in the world.