What is Operation Moonshot?
'''Operation Moonshot''' is a programme by the [[Government of the United Kingdom|UK government]] to allow many people in [[England]] to be tested for [[COVID-19]] as a way to allow large gatherings of people to happen there while maintaining control over the virus. According to the ''[[British Medical Journal]]'', the programme aims to perform 10 million tests per day by 2021. People are worried about it because, as a leaked government document says, it is thought it may cost £100bn, which is about three-quarters of what the [[National Health Service|NHS England]] costs every year. Statisticians say because any test can have inaccuracies, mass testing at this scale might cause hundreds of thousands of [[False positives and false negatives|false positives]] a day, resulting in very large numbers of people being told they are infected when they are not infected.<ref name=wired120920>{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.co.uk/article/operation-moonshot-coronavirus-testing|title=The big problem with Operation Moonshot? False positives|first=David|last=Cox|magazine=Wired UK|date=12 September 2020|via=www.wired.co.uk}}</ref> == References == {{reflist}} [[Category:COVID-19 pandemic]] [[Category:National Health Service]]