Matt Hancock has outlined his vision for a revolution in healthcare that would see millions routinely tested for viruses like the flu, just as they have been for Covid-19.
The health secretary told MPs that mass testing should become the norm to do more to prevent, rather than simply treat, disease.
He also hit out at what he suggested was a culture in the UK where staff “soldier on” and go into work while ill, potentially passing infections on to others.
The shift would be made possible by the “global-scale diagnostics capability” the UK has built to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
That capacity should not be allowed to wither once the current crisis is over, he told MPs.
“Afterwards we must use it, not just for coronavirus but everything,” he said.
He said he wanted a change in what he described as the ‘British way of doing things’ where “’if in doubt, get a test’ doesn’t just refer to coronavirus but refers to any illness that you might have.”
He asked: “Why in Britain do we think it’s acceptable to soldier on and go into work if you have flu symptoms or a runny nose, thus making your colleagues ill?
“I think that’s something that is going to have to change.”
He said that in the future “if you have… flu-like symptoms, you should get a test for it and find out what’s wrong with you, and if you need to stay at home to protect others, then you should stay at home.”
He told MPs on the Commons Health and Social Care Committee that the UK was “peculiarly unusual and outliers in soldiering on and still going to work, and it kind of being the culture that ‘as long as you can get out of bed you still should get into work’.”
“I want this massive diagnostics capacity to be core to how we treat people in the NHS so that we help people to stay healthy in the first place, rather than just looking after them when they’re ill.”
The government’s new Lighthouse laboratories, which carry out many of the tests, have been set up outside the normal NHS and are not accredited like NHS laboratories.
