Recommendation 171

As a result the UK squandered a leading position in diagnostics and converted it into one of permanent crisis. On 12 March, testing for covid-19 other than in hospitals was halted. In part this was because of the inadequacy of the early flu-based strategy—a flu-strategy which mandated ending testing when there was community transmission— but partly also because of a simple lack of capacity. The abandonment of community testing meant that contact tracing—which was fundamental to the success of the Korean approach—also had to be abandoned. If people could not be tested, their contacts could not be traced.