South London surge testing

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

I live in Wandsworth. Apparently everyone should book a surge test due to this South African variant. I went to book this morning but the soonest test slot is Monday.

This weekend pubs & restaurants will be full (& they've pedestrianised the streets to make plenty of capacity). it seems like very mixed messaging.

We're going away tomorrow for a long weekend in a holiday cottage. I'm booked in to a theme park on Friday and 2 pubs.

If this risk is high they'd put more restrictions back on, wouldn't they?

77 cases out of 650000 people makes the risk tiny. But I still feel conflicted.

I do think people are very quick to moan. The councils will have been given very little notice and I think they’ve done really well to set up so many sites so quickly. These things do take a day or two to set up and bed-in which is fair enough given the scale of the the project

It's not a complaint about what happens at test sites. It'san observation about the poor instructions for those who order a home test because they need to do something non-standard about the return

This info needed to be clearer and in the first tranche of what was published.

It would also have helped if they had included who to ring if you needed assistance to get the completed test to the collection point

I also posted the tests back - there was no guidance initially about that and it was only after I posted them yesterday that I realised we were meant to take them to a testing centre. Which I could have done but there really was no indication that was needed. A simple postcode check on the online order form could have flagged that up - it’s a simple enough fix.

It's hard to believe the new variant would only be around in these boroughs at this point. Surely residents travel all over London for work and now socialising, so it will be all over London by now? Watching the scenes from Soho in photos/on TV with everyone hugging their friends and inches away from each other's faces when they drink and chat on busy streets certainly makes it look inevitable...

There has been several months to plan for potential surge testing of whole boroughs. Test and trace and actually the councils too ( although think this is mainly test and trace) have had more than enough time to have thought through and planned for this eventuality.

We still haven’t had anything through the post or email about it. Lots of people still won’t be aware.

And yes, to planning. I pay council tax in Lambeth; they know my email address but no one has contacted me that way, no letter through the door, nothing at bus stops. There hasn’t been anything to proactively tell me about this - only what I heard on the radio two days ago.

@nordica

It's hard to believe the new variant would only be around in these boroughs at this point. Surely residents travel all over London for work and now socialising, so it will be all over London by now? Watching the scenes from Soho in photos/on TV with everyone hugging their friends and inches away from each other's faces when they drink and chat on busy streets certainly makes it look inevitable...

You're right but as with every other wave, the government wants to play it down for as long as possible. They prefer reaction and to say 'oh no, if only for hindsight' instead of proactive prevention.

Wandsworth have now announced they will be issuing PCR home tests at secondary schools - sounds like test at home and then return the kits to school

I do think people are very quick to moan

Our council put the first tweet out about this on Monday. I didn't receive an email about it until Thursday and on Friday (today) I had a message on my NHS test and trace app. Surely all of these things could have been done at the same time? And they could have informed people not to send their postal tests back when they made the first announcement, that would have taken no extra effort.

Today I had a quick look to see what appointments were available near me, of my six nearest pharmacies there were either no appointments at all or the next available was the 22nd of April. There were also no appointments available at the main site, the town hall.

If you get a home test now it can only be returned to two venues, do they want people without cars to take public transport to these. Why not have more drop off points?

Anyway, our postal tests all came back negative so I am not going to worry about it anymore...