It will never be the right time to charge for lateral flow tests during a pandemic

Recent polling shows that two in five people report difficulty obtaining a lateral flow test. So, with the Omicron variant still wreaking havoc in the population – with a surge in infections meaning that not only is the NHS short-staffed, but all employers report significant staffing problems due to infection and isolation – this is not the time to be thinking about charging for them. At all.

Yet there are rumours that this is exactly what is being considered – the Sunday Times reported that Boris Johnson could announce within weeks that free tests are being limited to high-risk settings (such as care homes, hospitals and schools) and to people with symptoms; though this was firmly denied by Cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi.

This is what I believe would happen if they did: it would have an immediate effect on the number of people taking tests in the first place. After all, having spent almost two years encouraging us to take up tests for Covid, the threat of charging us for the privilege is guaranteed to put many people off.

For most of us, this won’t be because we don’t want to – but that we can’t afford to. Although we don’t know as yet what the proposed cost would be, the idea that there would be a cost would prove prohibitive for many.

We already have a cost-of-living crisis – with cuts to benefits, and rising fuel and food costs – which is engulfing not just those with the least, but those that Theresa May described as “the just about managing”.

Charging for lateral flow tests would not just impact a niche group, it would also affect the majority of families and individuals who won’t have the means to fund them – even if there was a purely nominal charge of just a few pounds per test.

Tests are central to knowing not only if you have Covid, but when you can come out of self-isolation – which has now been reduced to five days from seven as of this Monday.

If the government made this decision, it would be lunacy – it would seem that those in power were working on the basis that the pandemic is over, when it’s nowhere near. Making lateral flow tests more difficult to obtain (impossible, in some cases) would be an act of self-sabotage.

There is no doubt that the test and trace system is expensive, but it is also essential in the collective fight against this ever-evolving virus. We are nowhere near the end of this pandemic – as the 150,000 people testing positive every day will testify to – as will the families losing loved ones.

Even if the humane argument doesn’t convince ministers never to do this, the economic case for testing is clear. Testing ensures people know what their Covid status is; the results help them decide whether to isolate or not and therefore help minimise the spread of the latest (and highly transmissible) variant.

It may seem that cases and mortality are high now with testing, but if you were to remove the ability of most people to access lateral flow tests, we would reach a new level of misery – and, crucially – blindness to the true population level of infection.

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At best, I’d like to think these rumours are perhaps designed to test public opinion on charging for lateral flow tests. After all, it’s not uncommon for politicians to use this method of leaking information or an idea and then quickly deny it. However you look at it, it’s yet another example of what has become synonymous with the current government: mixed messages.

Charging people to be tested for a virus during a global pandemic would be a sure-fire way to create Covid inequality. Those that have the means would be able to afford testing and make decisions on that basis, while everyone else would be left to guess and stress.

And while rising inequality is proving to be nearly as rampant as the Omicron variant, charging for lateral flow tests would only accelerate the considerable gulf that exists already between the affluent, and everyone else.

It will never be the right time to charge for tests during a pandemic – so let’s hope that it’s really nothing but a rumour, and stays that way. For all our sakes.