How the new £5 Covid tests work - and how they might end lockdown

Swab kits that give results in 15 minutes could pave the way for ‘daily freedom passes’

Brigadier Joe Fossey with a rapid test kit
Brigadier Joe Fossey, who coordinated a pilot mass-testing programme in Liverpool, with a rapid test kit
(Image credit: Tolha Akmen/Getty)

A newly developed cheap and rapid test for Covid-19 could help to contain the coronavirus pandemic as effectively as a vaccine, Boris Johnson has suggested.

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Holden Frith is The Week’s digital director. He also makes regular appearances on “The Week Unwrapped”, speaking about subjects as diverse as vaccine development and bionic bomb-sniffing locusts. He joined The Week in 2013, spending five years editing the magazine’s website. Before that, he was deputy digital editor at The Sunday Times. He has also been TheTimes.co.uk’s technology editor and the launch editor of Wired magazine’s UK website. Holden has worked in journalism for nearly two decades, having started his professional career while completing an English literature degree at Cambridge University. He followed that with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. A keen photographer, he also writes travel features whenever he gets the chance.