Health Secretary Matt Hancock said cases in Liverpool have been brought down “really quite remarkably” following the rollout of mass testing.
He told BBC Breakfast:
In Liverpool, cases are down by more than two-thirds in the last few weeks.
And this is a combination, of course, of those restrictions that have been in place, but also in Liverpool we put in mass testing.
They’ve tested over 200,000 people of the just over half a million who live in Liverpool. And they’ve found a load more people who were asymptomatic, didn’t know that they had a problem, didn’t know they have the virus.
And the combination of the mass testing, and the measures in Liverpool, have brought the cases down really quite remarkably, much faster than I would have thought was possible.
– ‘Let’s all make our own risk assessment at Christmas’
Prof Bauld said that, in planning whether people can meet over the festive period, governments may also be concerned about mental health, with levels of depression and anxiety significantly higher than expected for the time of year due to the pandemic.
She told BBC Good Morning Scotland:
This discussion is about trying to recognise that there are not only harms from the virus, there are other harms, people want to see their loved ones.
She added that, even if restrictions are eased, people should make their own decisions about what they feel comfortable doing.
It is up to us to decide, even if government says ‘OK, you can get together indoors with other people’, let’s all make our own risk assessment about the people we care about and ourselves and say how are we going to apply that to our own personal circumstances.
So I think, as with everything throughout this pandemic, it has got to be a partnership between guidance and support that government gives and what people decide to do for themselves and for their families.
