Free Covid Tests End as England Moves to Next Stage of ‘Living with Covid’
Free Covid tests officially ended for millions of people today as England moves to the next stage of ‘living with Covid’. MailOnline has more.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said now was the “right” time to withdraw the universal testing offer and “focus resources” on those who need it most.
He told the nation: “We are one of the most open and free countries in the world now, and that’s because of decisions that we’ve taken as a country.”
The Government website for ordering tests today displayed a message saying free Covid tests are now only available for certain groups. Most people will now have to purchase the swabs from high street stores, where they are available for about £2 each.
Yesterday NHS Test and Trace workers were pictured taking down the around 500 testing sites in the country.
England has ended its offer of free swabs under its plans to ‘live with’ the virus and following pressure from the Treasury over the bill – which ministers claimed cost £2 billion in January at the height of the Omicron wave.
Scotland will end its offer next month, while Wales is to stop handing out the swabs this summer.
Let’s hope it lasts.
Worth reading in full.
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Some of us have been living with Covid for 2 years and have been called flat earthers, covid idiots, stupid etc for being 2 years ahead of the curve.
I was talking to a friend who knows I’m unjabbed, never wore a mask and tried not to let the hysteria get to me, say I was lucky not to have caught it. I said how do we know I never “caught it” as I’ve never been tested. His response was I’d know if I’d of had it, didn’t the politicians state that the majority of people who catch it don’t know they have it!
I’ve met this response as well. Simultaneously (a) you would know if you had caught it and (b) there can be asymptomatic carriers. FFS.
So says Whitty, that “man of truth”FFS!
I wonder, since he insisted you’d know if you’d caught it, why he thought testing was at all necessary?
Or perhaps he just likes the T’s to be crossed.
His type are insisting on crossing the I’s.
I never saw the point in testing.
the point of the testing was to generate loads of false-positives to keep case numbers high so they could pretend there was a problem to be solved.
And many people “on the inside” made a handsome profit, much more than the poor Chinese slave labourers who made them.
They should have a “working day drinks party” to celebrate their earnings- ( apparently they are all the fashion in Downing Street !)
What if it was not serious for you but was serious for others?
And thus why our dear leaders tied themselves in knots.
Then ‘others’ should lock themselves away or invest in a HazMat suit and wear it at all times. Other people’s health is their responsibility, not mine. If they can’t be bothered to look after it why should I?
What if those ‘others’ were really nasty people and deserved to die?
Philosophical question.
It is been quite useful over the last 6 months or so to help measure the unfolding disaster that universal vaccination has brought upon us.
According to the BBC they have been the success of the century and we should all be very grateful!
Friends of mine would agree 100% and race you to the queue for the next booster
You can’t argue with these people, Smelly Melly.
They don’t even realise when they’ve disproven their own arguments!
Yes that’s how they conned the gullible with testing. Vicious circle
The question is, had what the infection or the disease? If symptoms are mild and short-lived as clearly in many individuals they are, many will not realise they ‘had’ it. This explains the alleged asymptomatic nonsense. How can anyone without symptoms know they have/had a disease?
The asymptomatic myth rests solely on PCR Testing which cannot detect disease and has a high false positive rate, and self-assessment. Anyone who has ever been involved with patients will know to put little credibility in anything they report.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Caledonia is planning to end the free Netflix binging, but Kween Krankie has already extended muzzle mandates twice and is still trying to legislate to make the temporary emergency permanent.
Surely at some point the (actual) government will have to show this yappy wee terrier the rolled up newspaper and un-devolve the loaned powers.
What’s “Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich,” in Scotch?
The same, at least it sounds like it.
Yes Roger, we live (or exist) with gritted teeth up here in Krankies Gulag
Undevolving would be great but only if the PM at the time behaved in a manner befitting a PM and did what they said they’d do…
The tests may have gone, but let’s celebrate (in these times of rampant inflation) that Wu-flu is still free at the point of transmission (most often in premises operated by our wonderful NHS).
Clap for our disease spreaders!
6 million are waiting to get it.
They are still there, but – just to add further insult to great injury -you now have to pay for them!
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it” is obsolete.
“Put that up your nose and wiggle it about” doesn’t work quite as well.
Poison control issues warning about Covid-19 rapid antigen tests.
https://twitter.com/TheNo1Waffler/status/1509222617819058185?cxt=HHwWksC44bD-6vEpAAAA
MSM reports that (shock/ horror) that one in eight have never taken a test!!
Are we supposed to be ashamed and apologise?
They’ve inadvertently given us the proportion of sensible UK residents!
Yes but to be fair it will be higher than one eighth; some just cannot get out of doing the tests, e.g. a very large proportion of the population employed in care jobs, hospitals etc. If we could include those people who have never wanted to “get tested”, I think it could easily be north of 30%.
Yesterday, there was a report about a petition to continue with taxpayer-paid testing for all. It had attracted 300,000 signatures. Obviously, not everyone who thinks this is really important will have signed it, but this strongly suggests that all of England has been held hostage by at most a million repeat-offenders since spring last year.
A positive test = week off work.
Only ashamed of our craven Mainstream Media.
There are going to be those who will struggle to *feel safe* without continual testing of themselves and others. I know some in my family. I just hope they aren’t going to disrupt the workplace with calls for everyone with a sniffle to stay home just in case.
The way things are going there won’t be any workplaces left to go to!
Then perhaps the lockdown fanatics and the maskateers will be satisfied.
They look forward to the ‘free’ ‘National Basic Income’ for watching Netflix.
I think I have compassion fatigue for all those who don’t ‘feel safe’.
Popped into a supermarket to pick up four items today, only had cash so had to queue for a checkout, 1 person ahead of me with a half full trolley, another checkout opens and normally I would have asked politely if I could go in front..but she was masked so didnt ask just moved faster than her, she was most affronted, I did hold back from telling her that due to her moronic status in my eyes she is invisible…. If only.
Likewise, Catee, shoppers still wearing masks have become non-persons to me. There were lots of them in Lidl and Home Bargains in Cheshire this morning…total idiots !
Look straight through them.
This ‘living with Covid’ nonsense needs to stop. Are they lighting us up with this garbage? It is a breathtaking insult to the incalculable number of people who have been affected and are yet to be affected by the arbitrary decrees of this regime. The impact of the dystopian measures on our society and its people has been so great that nothing less than prison for those responsible/involved would be satisfactory, yet these criminals now talk about ‘living with Covid’?
These bastards ought to be doing porridge and living with the consequences of their actions.
Yes, and ‘learning to live with Covid’ is even worse. I’ve never needed to learn and have always been quite prepared to live with whatever comes my way.
Were ‘awake’ Germans told to learn to live with Hitler I wonder?
Someone should start an on-line petition about this.
We can all sign and pretend we’ve ‘done something’.
That will show ’em!
Do the people giving ‘downticks’ know that they are as effective as signing on-line petitions?
Two seconds of Hate.
Feels good to have ‘done something’!
‘living with covid’ is baby speak for ‘covid is now endemic’, with symptoms just like the other endemic coronaviruses that cause …. the common cold.
Something that makes me snigger to myself is when someone coughs or sneezes near you, then says, with a little laugh, “Oh, it’s okay, I haven’t got covid”. I always reply “Well, I don’t care if you have”. They always look shocked that you are not cowering in terror. My response to anyone who indulges in mask/testing/vaccination appreciation is to ask them why they still believe in all the ‘covid bollocks’. I never get an answer, they either change the subject or give me a pitying look. I have never tested for covid, I am proud to say.
Free CovidTaxpayer-funded SARS-CoV-2 Tests End as England Moves to Next Stage of‘Living with Covid’‘Flogging the Dead Horse’Good. Now the lemmings can concentrate on panicking and virtue signalling about other important things – like peanuts on planes!
I would just like it on record that “I support the current thing!”
Here you go, in case you need it.
I’m tempted to get that on a t-shirt, but by the time it arrived I’d most likely be supporting The Previous Thing.
Some fine virtue-signalling going on here:
https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2022/03/heritage-railways-show-solidarity-with-counterparts-in-ukraine.html
So heritage railways are being advised not to run WW2 weekends (which bring in a fair amount of cash) in case “such an event could cause unintended anguish to visitors of Ukrainian heritage”.
Talk about tenuous! And clearly during previous wars (has there been any time since WW2 when there wasn’t a war going on somewhere?) there was no such concern about causing “unintended anguish”.
I’m trying to come up with a negative, cynical take on this news, but I can’t come up with one.
It’s unequivocally good news. Testing has been one of the scourges of the last 2 years. Good riddance to it, and let’s hope it never comes back.
Try this. Breaking news from a virus………….
When asked for a comment about the two year phoney war, a spokesperson for covid-19, who didn’t want to be named, said “we didn’t ask for this and did our best to mitigate the situation, no one was actually harmed directly by us and no viruses were injured by you, we could talk about this ad infinitum but it’s likely to gravitate towards the subjective, I am quite busy, so let’s call it quits this time”.
Now watch those (suit)cases drop like a stone.
In Finland LFT tests have never been free – people buy them. And they do buy them. My partner bought three, 4 weeks ago, tossed them into the supermarket trolley. I wasn’t very happy about that at all. “Only 9 Euros”, she said – I replied she could have bought two pairs of socks for her granddaughter for 9 Euros, rather than give the Chinese something more to grin about.
It’s non-stop testing here in Finland, and 99-100% face masks. I have made the observation that all those people I have seen in the shops without face masks have been men – make of that what you will, but it is a fact.
They have Bird Flu in the wings ( more dangerous new strain apparently).
The grey turtle in South Wales is desparate to keep this stupidity going for the longest time.
He is just a big zero without it.
So easy to spend other people’s money, isn’t it? A cool £2 bn.
Can’t wait to see the granular financial forensics on this incontinent spaff-fest.
We won’t? Oh, fair enough.
Pop another Schwab token in the leccie meter, love! It’s locusts for tea.
I wonder how many people’s mortgages or rent could have been paid using this £2bn (one month!!!). Or even, hospitals built?
It’s like the first half of Jack in the Beanstalk without the profitable denouement.
They’re burning 500 lorry loads of PPE a month! Saves on storage costs I suppose, can you make clean green power from burning toxic plastics?
Plastic gets a free environmental “green pass” ( far too much big money in its manufacture!)
Funny how the elderly must be saved from Covid even if it means they have to freeze to death.
I suppose dying of the cold at home helps to “save NHS resources”.
Freezing “keeps them safe”!
No. Freezing preserves them
It would be alot cheaper to give every adult in the country a million £ and let them buy their own tests, vacs etc.
I would spend mine on something else altogether.
Printing money to bust the £ ( just like the dollar) is just part of their digital plan,
We’re now moving into the persistent-reinfections stage in the vaccinated.
Agreed.
See latest from GVB.
But, they’re going to blame the refuseniks.
They’re never going to blame the miraculous jab.
How long before it gets compulsory?
They have to get rid of the control group, one way or another.
Late autumn, early winter. Prepare accordingly.
Something they will clearly be desperate to hide – perhaps this fact is the real reason why they are shutting down testing.. too many vaxxed people getting well miffed getting the lurgi multiple times. Just to give you an idea of the tricks they are starting to pull – last week I told you the % of positive tests in the 3x vaxxed was 58%, compared to 12% in unvaxxed. The report of Tuesday 22 March has the numbers at 57% and 15%, which seemed a little odd considering the English stats (3x vaxxed should keep rising). The report from Tuesday 29 March had the numbers at 59% and 15% – but this time a footnote caught my eye – since 22 March the infection stats are including children over the age of 5, prior to last Tuesday the numbers only included children over the age of 12. The vaxx was approved for the 5-11 group, but it was quietly walked-back pretty much the same week it was launched, so I should think that just about all children in that age group are unvaxxed. So in other words, they have had to fiddle the figures and add a group of… Read more »
Unvaxed and never tested, never will test. Would warp the figures, but I’ll grant you it is a possible reason to stop testing the vaxxed, showing them how unprotected they are. Still “it would have been worse if I hadn’t taken the bat gunk”.
Same here, not vaxxed and never tested. Had 2 different bouts of something, presumably viral, mid-November and just before Christmas, either of which could have been the dreaded lurgi, but I couldn’t be Rsed to do a test.
An older friend of my mum’s (82 I think, and boosted) currently has the lurgi and said exactly that to my mum – ‘thank goodness she was vaxxed, she only had a sniffle’.
They’ve just announced here in NL that they are winding down the gov testing centres, that home tests (we’ve had to pay for those from the beginning) will suffice and it’s up to people to be careful.
Yep!
As predicted by the “real” scientists!
duplicate
if I get a private pcr test that confirms covid will Spain accept that as proof I had it & recovered so I don’t need a booster for my hols?
F%$& Spain; take yourself and your money to a country that doesn’t require jabs, tests or masks.
eg Iceland Slovenia Hungary Mexico Costa Rica?
Am I getting hotter.
So hot you are at risk of a heart attack.
Well said. Sheep come in many forms 🐑
Sadly these things where organised when fully vaccinated meant something different to what it dies today.
the UK and many other nations no longer require any Covid details for traveler’s, the EU is still intent on treating the uk differently purely because of their animosity over Brexit.
I can’t see Europe changing their position until after Macron is no longer the rolling president of the EU.
This is not a game that you can win by playing it, even if you think you’re cheating.
Just thinking this last 2 years has been the most brilliant planned April Fool prank ever! There’s always been something odd, artificial and off-key about the actions of governments and supranational authorities across the world. It was all a big wind up after all, with Fauci, Farrar, Tedros, Hancock, Johnson, Turdeau, Biden (great cameo), Whitty, Ferguson. All pulled together by the genius of the Gotcha, Noel Edmonds and no doubt those lovable funsters, Ant and Dec. And all our grannies and granddads are going to come out from behind the velvet curtains with guilty smiles and a twinkle in their eyes. How the doctors and nurses at the jab stations will laugh – ‘Gotcha! Fooled you’. And Bill! He’ll be splitting his sides! Elaborate but worth it!
What will they come up with next!
My triple jabbed office mate has it again, got that last swap right up there on Tuesday, he has cold symptoms and sounds pretty rough.
I’ve had a headache for 1 day in 2 years, and that could have been down to IBS (although you could replace the B in bowl with the B in my last name, at any point over the last 2 years, in fairness I’ve been very irritable!)
My workmates are in a similar situation. Triple jabbed. All accept they are getting covid. Yet took the jab on the basis it would help etc. What do you do?
At this point they are running out of space to move the goalposts. They are already down to ‘well I’m less likely to die’. Common sense of course dictates that they weren’t going to die of covid anyway, so what they’re really saying is, ‘it’s doing fuck all for me but I’d rather not lose face here’. Unfortunately the government is about to begin (further) obfuscating the data on deaths, I was curious as to their next manoeuvre once the ADE kicks in.
Show compassion?
Wonder how many testing probes Superdrug sells now or even EBay
The economic impact from covid scam will begin to register with the masses today. The manufactured war in Ukraine can only take part responsibility for the financial collapse. The “free” dodgy test crap itself has cost the tax payer a fortune.
I’m afraid the gullible will blame it on the bad Russian. And maybe the orange American. Some of them will still believe it’s all because of Thatcher.
“Why are bills going up? Bills are going up because the energy price cap – the maximum price suppliers in England, Wales and Scotland can charge households – is being raised. Energy firms will be able to increase bills by 54% when the new cap is introduced on Friday 1 April.”
My gas and electricity supplier actually increased my monthly direct debits in advance, based on their estimates using the new prices. Over the last couple of days, their online system has not been very well. I tried to send in my end of March meter values, but it was not possible to access my account with them. No surprise if loads of us tried to do that at the end of March.
The fortitude on display by the people of this country in “living with covid” is beyond measurable.
Astounded I am. Astounded.
I have built up a stockpile. I test and test until I get a false positive and then I sit in the corner and shit myself and wait for death.
This will, hopefully, mean that a lot fewer tests will be carried out hence there will be a big fall in “cases”. Fewer cases will mean less fearmongering and less demand for tests. A virtuous circle.
They are not and never have been free. They are paid for by the long-suffering and ever more put-upon taxpayer.
Can’t you see the sort of economic trail that this process is a part of. It isn’t difficult it is sadly an expression of a collective will in western countries. In occultism there is the idea of egregores or thought forms. If you are blind to how these things take hold then you will just grasp around for lame explanations. Because in the coming weeks they are going to become more desperate and more absurd. There is an importance to remaining grounded in such times and you won’t be able to do that without giving an opening to the heart and the spirit.
‘Cases’ will plumet. I wonder if this is why UKHSA will cease to publish data, because even the most dense in our population might twig we have lived through a Testademic, an artefact of the induced hysteria?
If it is the war of all against all, which is perfectly expressed in the algorithms and formulas of our masters then it really will come to all of us fighting each other while they get away with it. Maybe a time is coming where we recognise each other.
Nobody is “Living with Covid” – it’s all made up.
Unfortunately we are Living with Javid. That’s the real problem.
Ah, good. Perhaps we’ll get our garden waste bins emptied at last; the local authority has had to suspend collections for the past 3 weeks because, you know, covid is affecting their crews. So many positive tests….as far as I know, not obligatory for the binmen!
Entirely coincidental that we’ve been having lovely weather, I’m sure.
Or that orange juice can give a positive test result, allegedly.
Then you dump your waste in the gardens of the town councillors.
It is the only language they understand.
Or all over their desks at the town hall.
You’re full of helpful advice.
Even though you don’t appear to have done any of the things you recommend, or, let’s be honest, the slightest thing to challenge the tyranny.
You just dedicate your life to damaging morale.
Bin collection clearly varies as much as GP services.
No problem with either here on the Northants side of the Northants/Rutland border.
So the now want to charge you for labelling you ‘sick’ under the false pretences of their ‘fake’ tests?
Just another ‘scam’ against the people? It just gets better!