‘A game-changer – if it’s not Boris bluster’: Liverpool cautiously welcomes plans to mass test entire city

Hope is that pilot scheme will bring infection rates right down but, ask residents, what took so long?

Liverpool University Hospitals Trust is overwhelmed by coronavirus, its medical director has said (PA)

Plans to test every person in Liverpool for Covid-19 as part of a pilot scheme to attempt to control the virus have been welcomed by leaders, business owners and residents in the city – on the assumption they actually work.

The effort will see some 2,000 troops deployed in a bid to offer almost half a million rapid-turnaround tests in the space of just a couple of weeks.

Advocates of the scheme, which will begin on Friday, say it will allow authorities to drive down infection rates by identifying people with coronavirus early and having them self-isolate.

If successful, it could be rolled out more widely so people found negative in regular tests can carry on with their normal lives.

And on Tuesday, the scheme received an almost overwhelmingly positive response from people who spoke to The Independent.

Conservative governments will never be popular here – a point only exacerbated last month after the city region was given limited financial support when placed under enhanced restrictions – yet this is an action that appears to have real widespread support. With a single caveat: that it actually works as intended and does not suffer the same implementation issues that have plagued Boris Johnson’s “world-beating” test and trace system.

“I don’t think anyone in Liverpool is going to praise this government given the hardships of the last few months but if this works – get people in, get them tested and get the rates down so we can come out of lockdown in December and start to return to some normality – it can only be a good thing,” says John Hughes, boss at the Liverpool Nightlife community interest company. “The nightmare is lockdown ends and our rates are still high and we are back in tier 3, so anything that can stop that happening has to be welcome.”

Yet the 54-year-old also sounded a word of caution.

“Everyone knew a good test-and-trace system was the key to beating this thing, so why did it take so long?” he asks. “Why wasn’t it in place when the students arrived? There’s a lot of businesses which have already shut down because of this. For them, it’s too late.”

Four weeks ago, as Liverpool became the first city to be condemned to tier 3 in the government’s then-new coronavirus alert system, Hughes told The Independent he feared the local economy would be decimated in the same way it was during the deindustrialisation of the Eighties.

“This offers a way out and could be a game-changer,” he says today. “So, let’s hope this time it’s not all Boris bluster and broken promises. Let’s hope this actually is world-beating.”

Nearby, at the independent Lovelocks coffee shop, owner Sarah Lovelock is largely in agreement.

Her place will become takeaway only over the upcoming lockdown and she believes she can make that work – but the future still feels unpredictable. Fears of her business having to go into debt or facing closure still worry her.

But a mass testing scheme, she hopes, could offer some reassurance that smoother times may be ahead.

“I have friends who work in labs where they have to be tested every couple of days before they go to work and, for them, their life – or certainly working life – has carried on as normal,” the 37-year-old says. “So, if we can do something like that for everyone, that seems to me to be a first step out of this whole mess until, or if, a vaccine happens.”

The tests will be voluntary although encouraged. Will she have one herself? “Yes, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t. It could literally save lives.”

This was the rallying cry from city leaders too.

Liverpool has exclusively Labour MPs and largely they remained silent on Tuesday morning – perhaps aware that acknowledging such a scheme could indeed be a game-changer may be seen as implicit praise for Mr Johnson.

Yet city mayor Joe Anderson fully backed the new scheme, which will be implemented by the army, the NHS and the local council.

“Let’s do this for our City, our NHS, our people and our economy,” he tweeted. “The opportunity to use voluntary mass testing in Liverpool can help us get out of Tier 3 when lockdown ends on 2nd Dec. 80% of people who are positive don’t know they have it, this will help us identify them.”