Quick coronavirus testing could enable nightclubs and theatres to reopen, Boris Johnson has suggested.
The PM said “rapid” lateral flow tests could be used by “those parts of the economy we could’t get open last year”.
“That, in combination with vaccination, will probably be the route forward,” he told a Downing Street news conference.
But he stressed it was “still early days”, with “lots of discussions still to be had”.
A government source said: “There is a long way to go before we can get people back at big events safely.”
Nightclubs have been unable to operate since the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, while many theatres have struggled to make social distancing work.
It comes as Mr Johnson said people must be “optimistic but patient” about an end to coronavirus restrictions in England.
He said steps taken to ease lockdown should be “cautious but irreversible” ahead of next week’s release of a roadmap for lifting curbs.
Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said that the government favoured testing over vaccine passports as a means to reopen the economy, since it is not yet clear whether a vaccinated individual can transmit the virus.
Mr Zahawi described preliminary evidence on the effect of vaccines on coronavirus transmission as “really encouraging”, but told the BBC the full data might not be available for weeks.
“We have a couple of very large-scale studies related to giving us better data on the vaccines,” Mr Zahawi told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We should be able to see really good data in the next few weeks from those studies.”
Michael Kill, the boss of the Night Time Industries Association, said administering rapid tests would not be straightforward, even if it was the way venues such as nightclubs were allowed to reopen.
He told the BBC that professionals would be required to administer swab tests outside the venue, where clubbers would need to wait for at least 15 minutes to get a negative result before being allowed in.
That would force venues to stagger admissions and have procedures in place to deal with positive cases and those who they came into contact with. – BBC
