Covid-19 Update - Statement

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 1:54 pm on 10 September 2020.

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Photo of Lord Bethell Lord Bethell The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care 1:54, 10 September 2020

The noble Lord is right to be concerned about false positive results. However, our experience, our piloting and the emerging technologies suggest that that will be the case in a relatively small proportion of the tests and is entirely manageable within a mass population testing system. With regard to the idea that we can somehow identify vulnerable groups and target them pre-emptively, I wish that that were true, but this disease constantly confounds expectations and turns up in places where we least expect it. If we could tell people that they were going to get the disease, we would not have this problem in the first place.