London: The UK The government wasted a massive £37 billion ($51 billion, 44 billion euros) last year on a test and trace program that failed to control the spread of Covid-19, a report MPs said Wednesday.
Government and its inexperienced head, Dido Harding, displayed “Gung-Ho Confidence” for the program, which was presided over by House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said.
Meg Hillier of the opposition Labor Party told BBC radio: “But in the end it promised massively for what it got and it was eye-watering sums of money.”
“That’s one of the biggest concerns – it’s almost as if the taxpayer was an ATM machine. The lack of respect for taxpayer funding is a real concern for us as a committee,” she said.
When the pandemic broke out early last year, Britain tried to build a massive program to test for new cases and trace those infected.
But its caseload soon exploded and the country now has the second death toll in Europe after Russia.
The lawmakers’ report said Harding and the government had relied heavily on expensive external contractors rather than the existing network in the state-run National Health Service.
The report said the uptake of services offered by the program was “variable” and that “only a minority of people experiencing Covid-19 symptoms get tested”.
Overall, it concluded, the plan “has not achieved its main objective of helping break the chain of Covid-19 transmission and enabling people to return to a more normal way of life”.
The government defended the testing program and insisted it now receives more people testing than any other European country.
The head of the UK’s Health Protection Agency, Jenny Harris, said it is “saving lives every single day and helping us fight Covid-19 by breaking the chain of transmission and breaking outbreaks wherever it exists.” does”.
Government and its inexperienced head, Dido Harding, displayed “Gung-Ho Confidence” for the program, which was presided over by House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said.
Meg Hillier of the opposition Labor Party told BBC radio: “But in the end it promised massively for what it got and it was eye-watering sums of money.”
“That’s one of the biggest concerns – it’s almost as if the taxpayer was an ATM machine. The lack of respect for taxpayer funding is a real concern for us as a committee,” she said.
When the pandemic broke out early last year, Britain tried to build a massive program to test for new cases and trace those infected.
But its caseload soon exploded and the country now has the second death toll in Europe after Russia.
The lawmakers’ report said Harding and the government had relied heavily on expensive external contractors rather than the existing network in the state-run National Health Service.
The report said the uptake of services offered by the program was “variable” and that “only a minority of people experiencing Covid-19 symptoms get tested”.
Overall, it concluded, the plan “has not achieved its main objective of helping break the chain of Covid-19 transmission and enabling people to return to a more normal way of life”.
The government defended the testing program and insisted it now receives more people testing than any other European country.
The head of the UK’s Health Protection Agency, Jenny Harris, said it is “saving lives every single day and helping us fight Covid-19 by breaking the chain of transmission and breaking outbreaks wherever it exists.” does”.
.