From two days ago:
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/operation-moonshot-salford-trial-refocus-19105241
Has Operation Moonshot already crash landed? Salford is told to 'refocus' regular rapid test trial
The mass testing pilot will now prioritise resources to 'prevent and manage outbreaks'
The pilot, which promised a new saliva-based test for all Salford residents on a weekly basis, will now prioritise resources to 'prevent and manage outbreaks'.
The target could soon be to test 1,000 people a day, Salford council has said.
This comes after it was revealed that Salford was still 'quite a way off' testing 200,000 people a week, raising questions over the feasibility of mass testing.
The local authority has now been asked to focus on testing those in 'high-risk' environments with regular testing offered in some high-density housing areas.
and
The city was selected for a new, 'community-wide' trial of saliva-based testing in September, starting with up to 250 tests a day for selected participants.
At the time, the government said this would later be 'scaled to the whole area'.
Since then, Salford council and its NHS partners have been working with volunteers providing saliva samples for weekly tests.
But two weeks ago, a Salford NHS clinical commissioning group executive revealed that the trial had still not successfully reached 250 tests a day.
So I'm reading this collectively now as a recognition that there is a real problem in the NW region with availability of testing and turn around times are far too slow.
Salford is now theorectically already recieving the assistance that they are now promising to Liverpool and Lancashire with rapid testing.
BUT crucially, the amount that this will improve the situation in the near future is vastly overstated simply because the Salford pilot is struggling to make anywhere near the numbers that were being promised.
This isn't going to make a big difference to anything anytime soon.