Tweedledido and Tweedledum?

'NHS Test and Trace' sounds like a part of the UK's well-loved National Health Service. It is, however, actually an outsourced service in England, operated by the National Institute for Health Protection (a body set up in 2020) and headed by Baroness Dido Harding. Although it is very costly, 'NHS Test and Trace' has not (to put it mildly) impressed in terms of its role in testing (I won't even mention its trace role, where it seems even less effective) for Covid-19. The body mainly relies on the lateral flow test. We are constantly being told by the media that it is fast, delivering a result within 30 minutes of swabbing, without the need to involve a laboratory. What is less commonly emphasised, however, is that this test is not especially accurate, delivering a number of false positive and false negative results. One of their senior operatives, Susan Hopkins, is now telling us that local authorities are being called upon to expand their plans for mass testing to pick up asymptomatic carriers of the virus in their populations (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/09/more-asymptomatic-testing-can-be-a-vital-tool-to-stop-the-spread-of-covid). Hopkins claims that circa 33% of people, infected with coronavirus, show no symptoms and do not present themselves for testing at test and trace centres. These people could, of course, infect many people around them, without being aware they were a risk. Hopkins is effectively suggesting that local authorities call in her agency to carry out community testing in work places. Although she notes the need to support people, who would have to self-isolate as a result of getting a positive test result, she implies that the funding for this is down to the already cash-starved local authorities or employers. Very substantial numbers of people, in the UK, receive no sickness pay and, when they do, it is far from adequate. Hopkins call seems to me, more like a sales pitch than the offer of a public health solution.