The UK government has approached Amazon and other companies about using their services to increase urgently the delivery of coronavirus tests to frontline health and social care workers.
In a move that would have been unthinkable in Britain’s largely publicly funded health sector before the Covid-19 crisis, the government is in talks with companies about boosting the availability of tests for healthcare staff, according to two public health officials.
Businesses with established delivery infrastructure would initially help deliver tests to medical and social care workers, and then the general public. The idea of later sending test kits to people at home is another option being explored.
Workers at hospitals and care homes for the elderly across the country have expressed rising frustration about a lack of tests. Without knowing if they have been infected by the virus, they do not know if they should go to work if they have mild symptoms and put people in their care at risk, or stay at home and strain stretched colleagues further.
An online petition calling for the testing of frontline NHS staff has gathered more than 1m signatures.
Testing has become a flashpoint in the global struggle to contain the Covid-19 outbreak. The World Health Organization has said it is vital for governments to “test, test, test” as widely as possible so infected people can be isolated, along with anyone they have contacted, and authorities understand the spread of infection.
The UK has been doing up to 5,000 tests a day but health officials said last week they hoped this number would rise to 10,000 a day this week, to 25,000 within four weeks and then to 250,000.
While tests to detect whether people have the virus are a priority, officials are also looking at whether companies could help to deliver a new antibody test — described as a “game changer” by prime minister Boris Johnson — that people could use to see if they have been infected with the virus in the past.
One person familiar with the British discussions said that under one proposal both the regular and antibody tests could be ordered online on Amazon’s website, then picked up by the US retail company’s couriers and delivered to a private diagnostic company.
This person said test results would be sent to Public Health England, a government agency, and the person who had been tested.
Amazon and the UK health department declined to comment. But one official confirmed that ministers were set to invite a range of companies to draw up proposals for delivering the virus test to frontline workers and to people self-isolating at home.
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The antibody test would show who has had the virus and may have therefore developed immunity to the virus.
Knowing this would boost the safety of hospital staff and could eventually give scientists a clearer idea of when enough people had developed resistance to allow schools, restaurants and pubs to reopen.
Robert Jenrick, communities secretary, said on Sunday the government was close to obtaining “millions” of antibody tests and expected them to be available in the coming weeks.
Public health experts agree the antibody test could be transformative, although it is unclear how long it will take to produce a test that is guaranteed to be accurate.
Using private companies to collect people’s health data would normally provoke controversy. But some public health experts believe the urgency of the coronavirus crisis would ease such concerns.
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