Coronavirus Daily: Tracking in the UK Works. So Why Stop It?

These days in Europe, it seems as though the pandemic is behind us. An increasing number of countries are ditching the use of certificates to enter indoor venues like restaurants or gyms and abandoning quarantine rules. And more people are going bare-faced, which reflects a certain level of regained normalcy. The U.K. was one of the first nations to accelerate that return to normal. Now, concerns are mounting that it may be getting ready to go a step further and scrap the weekly Covid-19 survey by the Office for National Statistics. While the U.K. Health Security Agency opened a new laboratory last week that will test new Covid vaccines, gather research and assess variants, the ONS weekly survey helps the government keep on top of infection rates and antibody levels across the country. It is less prone to fluctuations because it studies the same households, and can detect Covid in people who might not get tested, or in those who don’t know they’re infected as well as asymptomatic cases.