Mass testing could end the need for two weeks of self-isolation, Boris Johnson said yesterday as he exhorted an “anxious, weary and fed-up” nation to follow lockdown rules.
The prime minister limited his room for manoeuvre to extend restrictions beyond four weeks on the first day of the England-wide lockdown, saying he had “no doubt” that “we will get things open again before Christmas”.
Holding out the prospect of rapid mass testing being piloted in Liverpool as a “real way forward through the crisis”, Mr Johnson said in Downing Street: “People will have as normal a Christmas as possible.”
Boris Johnson insists four-week lockdown will slow virus
Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, who appeared alongside the prime minister, was more cautious. He said only that the period of
