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Anyone actively involved in parenting their children (ie not you Boris 
) could have foreseen a massive spike in testing needs as soon as schools reopened, as I'll explain below. Yet more proof that we need more parents in parliament
) could have foreseen a massive spike in testing needs as soon as schools reopened, as I'll explain below. Yet more proof that we need more parents in parliament
It's pretty simple really. #Covid19 symptoms in adults are more distinctive - the cough, the loss of taste & smell. Not in children. In children the symptoms are v generic - fatigue, fever, loss of appetite. Basically the same as just about every other mild childhood illness
So any time a child displays these symptoms (which is a frequent occurrence with kids), it *could* be Covid. Could be, but probably isn't. But schools can't take any chances, so if there's any risk of Covid, the kid has to stay off school till they test negative (or wait 2 weeks)
Parents are desperate for kids to be back in school. Kids need to go to school. Parents need to work. Parents & kids need a break from each other. The prospect of 2 weeks' isolation for every fever or sniffle is unfathomable. So parents need to get tested
Many families have more than one child. If one kid shows any kind of symptoms, everyone in the household has to isolate. Without testing, given the frequency of mild childhood illnesses, some families would barely leave the house. So we need tests
So either we allow every household containing at least one child who's slightly under the weather to skip 2 weeks of work & school for every member of the household, or we provide testing to let them rule out false alarms and get back to work/ school
If we don't get testing sorted soon, then the initial problem (households isolating unnecessarily) will soon change to an even worse problem (households deciding to take a chance, probably not Covid, go into school/work anyway), at which point real cases will spread much faster
The growing incidence of winter colds and bugs will only make this problem worse. But the schools thing was entirely foreseeable. It is a wonder that it was not foreseen. Does no-one in the government have school age children and half a brain? 
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