Imagine the scene: it’s 2023, everyone in north-west London wakes up to a text telling them that there are high levels of flu and norovirus in their area, as well as an outbreak of Covid-19. You feel a little unwell. You walk to your bathroom cabinet and take out a home test that can tell you whether you have Covid, flu or maybe just a common cold.
“The old world was you think ‘oh well, better go to work’ and by the end of the day you’ve infected 20 people,” says John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford university, who has spearheaded the widespread rollout in the UK of so-called “lateral flow devices”, which can be used at home and give test results in 20 minutes. “But now there’s a new world where you can test to see if you’re infectious and make sure you don’t pass it on.”
