ROBERT HARDMAN: Lift-off for the Mersey Moonshot

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Should this be the breakthrough which we all hope it is, then let history note that it was Daily Mail reader Moira Garwood of Wavertree who set the ball rolling. 

Yesterday morning, the city of Liverpool – assisted by the Army – became the first place in the UK to roll out mass Covid testing for everyone. 

It also became the first to use a new type of high-speed test for this infernal virus. 

And at the very front of the queue at the first testing centre to open yesterday morning, I found Moira, 80, who had walked half a mile from the home where she has been shielding from the bug ever since this pandemic began. 

‘My son is very cross with me for coming down here in case I catch something. But the fact is that I want to do this for my children, for my grandchildren and for the whole city,’ she said. 

‘And, also, I can’t wait to see these lovely soldiers.’ Moments later, Moira was being ushered into a sports hall by the 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment. No matter that her hands were too cold for her to work her mobile phone or that it couldn’t scan the requisite bar code or that Moira could not actually remember her mobile phone number. 

‘This lovely young man did it all for me and when I left, I gave him a virtual hug,’ she told me afterwards, having just received a text confirming a negative result. ‘I think the whole operation is wonderful.’ 

Not everyone, it must be said, had such a happy experience. Teething troubles and confusion between different elements of local and national officialdom meant that some people were left queueing outside testing centres for more than two hours after the appointment time they had pre-booked the day before. 

There were also reports of patients visiting a test-and-trace service for people with symptoms mistakenly joining a nearby queue for asymptomatic tests with the Army. 

However, the overall response here on Merseyside thus far has been a good-natured resolve to try to give this scheme a sporting chance. 

It was less than a month ago that Liverpool became the first English city to be placed in the most restrictive Tier Three category of anti-Covid measures due to an alarming rise in hospital admissions. 

If they weren’t happy about it, they were less combative than neighbouring Manchester which fought and fought against Tier Three status for days. 

Now, as Liverpool positively embraces the idea of mass testing, senior figures on Manchester council are sniffily warning that they have ‘fundamental concerns’ about the Merseyside scheme. 

You’d almost be forgiven for thinking these two cities might have some sort of rivalry issue. 

‘You wouldn’t expect me to comment on something like that,’ laughs Tory health minister Nadine Dorries, a proud Liverpudlian who once worked as a nurse at the Royal Liverpool Hospital. 

‘What I will say is that the people of Liverpool know that they are acting as trailblazers and that they hold the key for the rest of the country. They know how important it is that this works.’ 

How it works, in short, is that if the asymptomatic, as well as those with symptoms, have access to swift, reliable testing on a regular basis – and, crucially, use it – then unwitting super-spreaders will soon be isolated. At the same time, infection rates fall and local confidence rises. 

The Government has now invested hundreds of millions in a new process called a lateral flow test which can provide swift on-site Covid results in under half an hour. It works without recourse to a laboratory but is so sensitive that it needs to happen indoors. 

However, to get something like this up and running in a matter of days requires an instant supply of disciplined, motivated, easily-trained personnel. Step forward the British Army. Soldiers have been helping out with scattered mobile testing operations since this pandemic started, of course. This is on a completely different scale. 

Troops have been despatched to Liverpool this week in brigade strength – 2,000 of them. Their mission: quite literally, to get up the noses of the locals – and down their throats, too. 

‘Just tickle the tonsils and then it’s ten seconds up one or the other nostril,’ says a very polite private from the Yorkshire Regiment. I am inside the main hall of the Liverpool Exhibition Centre after queueing outside for an hour and a quarter. 

Directed to a cubicle, you wait for a soldier to pop up on the other side of the confessional to hand you a plastic swab. You dab the back of your throat followed by a nostril and hand it back to the gloved hand, whereupon you are free to go. 

The soldier then puts each swab in a tube, adds a few drops of reagent, and then squeezes a couple of droplets on to a stick like a pregnancy test. 

That sits on another table for half an hour until it declares a result. A soldier scans the barcode which instantly relays the result to your phone or email. When they are not doing this, the troops are garrisoned at an out-of-season holiday camp along the coast. 

I drive up to the Pontins Holiday Park at Southport which is a picture of out-of-season misery in the driving rain. Outsiders are not admitted but quite a few locals have turned up to wave through the fence and say hello. 

Troops from as far afield as Scotland and Wiltshire have been assigned to what the Government once called ‘Operation Moonshot’ but now insists is called nothing of the sort. 

What the regular soldiers think remains to be seen, though they seem a cheerful lot. The press are not allowed to talk to them, apparently because Downing Street wants to keep the focus on the tests and not the testers. 

Their commanding officer, Lt Gen Tyrone Urch, gave a brief interview yesterday to say that they were ‘amazingly positive’. When I ask if we might photograph some of them marching past the famous statue of The Beatles out on the waterfront, the request is declined on the grounds that they are ‘too busy’. 

The city which gave us the Fab Four seems to think much the same of the Forces, though. ‘They just make you feel safer, don’t they?’ says pensioner Doreen Hughes whom I meet taking a bracing stroll along the beach at Crosby. 

This scheme is due to last for a fortnight or so, whereupon the city, the NHS and the Army will decide what to do next. Councillor Paul Brant, who is the cabinet member for health on the city council, is confident that it will be worthwhile. 

‘We’re very pleased to be the pilot for this,’ he tells me. 

‘This was the first city to have a director of public health, the first to have a public wash-house. We like being at the forefront.’ 

Liverpool still has some major problems, not least such a rise in Covid hospital admissions that much elective surgery has, once again, been cancelled. 

The new Royal Liverpool Hospital building which should have been completed years ago is still way overdue, millions over-budget and must now be redressed all over again because it has dangerous cladding. 

But if this does lead to a marked drop in infections, then might Liverpool reasonably deserve and expect to be at or near the front of the queue for getting back to a semblance of normality when lockdown ceases? ‘I would certainly hope so,’ says Nadine Dorries. In which case, Moira Garwood, take a bow.