As another lockdown looms, we are not in a much better position to fight the virus

Editorial: Liverpool could become the only part of the country where Covid is under control, but that will not last if the rest of the northwest remains highly infected

Boris Johnson addresses the media in Downing Street on Saturday (Getty)

Perhaps it is some subliminal act of contrition for past slights, slurs and neglect, or simply a measure of the scale of the emergency, but it seems right and fitting that Liverpool should be the subject of the first city-wide Covid mass-testing experiment. With local hospitals at or near capacity, something had to be done to relieve the pressure on beds, and to protect lives. 

The “medical and moral disaster” the prime minister has spoken about is all too close to reality in Merseyside. This time, there is no room for any bungling by private contractor cronies, so Boris Johnson has also decided to utilise the army.  

It is an extraordinary state of affairs, even for these strange, unpredictable times. It highlights just how woeful the government’s record on test, trace and isolate has been. For what Liverpool proves, in extreme form, is that lockdowns are not an end in themselves, and will not suppress the virus in a sustained way without a proper, rapid public health response to local outbreaks. It is the failure to deliver this that has been one of the greatest of the many disappointments in the government’s response to Covid. The Liverpool exercise should prove the worth of such a system, were it in any doubt.