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  • 3 years ago
Covid case numbers are rising, as yet another new strain of Omicron has been detected in fifteen countries worldwide. Could it mean the return of restrictions for us here in Britain? And would you support the return of free testing if it meant we could avoid them? We took to the streets to find out from members of the public.

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00:00 The one thing we're looking at is free testing coming back. Would you be in favour of that?
00:07 What? You mean the kits?
00:08 Yeah, that they're going to pay for.
00:10 Yeah, I'm definitely into seeing free testing again. I didn't know you had to pay for them
00:14 at the moment. I've still got a kit from when it was free.
00:18 I'm quite unsure with that, yes or no. It depends on the individual, it depends if they're
00:22 comfortable doing that. So it varies from case by case for me.
00:27 Whilst free, there were so many other things that were free or money spent very unwisely
00:34 by the government of the day. So why not make it free? You can still restrict the number
00:41 of kits that you give out to people.
00:44 Pirola is the latest mutation of the Omicron Covid variant that cropped up in the summer.
00:49 It's been detected in 15 countries, including France, Spain, Portugal and Germany so far.
00:55 Its appearance comes as here in Britain we've seen more than 100,000 new cases of Covid
01:00 as of the 10th of September, according to the Zoe Health study. Are you concerned about
01:05 the rising figures ahead of the challenging winter months?
01:08 I think that for it being free, I would think that would be the best course of action because
01:13 a lot of people will just go and they just won't spend the money on the tests. And so
01:18 they could be going out and they just won't care enough to test to see whether or not
01:21 they have it.
01:22 I guess 1 billion per cent public health is in the toilet. If we start to get any more
01:29 restrictions it's going to be very, very dodgy for the economy. It's already massively, like
01:35 only alive where, what was it, 20 billion the United States printed within six months,
01:41 which was like more money than it's ever been in that economy. It's really scary to think
01:45 that we'll have to prop things up even more.
01:48 Unless there's evidence to show that the vaccine has become ineffective for some reason,
01:54 then I don't think any more restrictions should be brought in.
01:58 Definitely. And I've got no idea what's happening about vaccines this winter. So it's all very
02:03 uncertain at the moment.
02:05 Is Covid something you're kind of worried about?
02:07 Yes, very definitely. Because I'm caring for somebody with an incurable brain cancer. He's
02:12 got a compromised immune system. So yeah, it is a worry.
02:18 Not that long ago I was really ill and I had to cancel on a mate and he says, "Have you
02:23 got Covid?" And I've got a one-year-old baby. I haven't watched the news in months, so I've
02:28 got no idea that it's rife again. But I couldn't get a test at the time because obviously I
02:35 wanted to protect my family from myself if I did have something like that. So yeah, available
02:42 free testing would be great.
02:44 I think if you charge for testing anyway, there are some people that just basically
02:51 can't afford that. I don't know how much the cost would be. But yeah, if it was free, I
03:00 think more people would be likely to take up on the offer.
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