Britain's mass coronavirus testing programme could be abandoned in the new year, one of the Government's experts hinted today.
Professor Lucy Chappell, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Health, told MPs that officials were committed to the routine asymptomatic swabbing scheme until the end of 2021.
But she admitted ministers were considering ditching the widespread use of lateral flow tests 'beyond January'.
Other experts said it is time to shift who is tested regularly, as the UK learns to live with the virus.
No10 launched its ambitious mass-testing scheme to great fanfare in April. But the system — a key part of the £37billion Test and Trace programme — has repeatedly been derided since its inception.
All adults are currently entitled to pick up two free testing kits a week, which can be collected from pharmacies or ordered online.
They are intended to be used by people when they do not show symptoms of Covid to pick up the estimated one in five cases that are asymptomatic and ensure people isolate.
But the kits have been criticised over fears they are inaccurate, especially when self-administered.
Whitehall sources have already revealed the system will soon start to cost taxpayers billions of pounds.
Professor Lucy Chappell (left), chief scientific adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care, said the Government was committed to mass testing — including of schoolchildren — until at least January but is considering dropping the programme after that. But Sir Andrew Pollard (right), who was part of the team that created the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, said the Government should move quicker and end mass testing in schools earlier this winter
ENGLAND TESTING: England's lateral flow testing skyrocketed in March this year after No10 introduced a programme to swab all schoolchildren
Asked about whether the nation should move away from testing asymptomatic people at the Commons' Science and Technology Committee, Professor Chappell said: 'In the short term, I think we should be continuing with testing, particularly symptomatic individuals.
'And I know that other groups are evaluating at what point we reconsider testing asymptomatic individuals beyond January, beyond spring.'
But she added: 'I would like to think that in five years' time we won't all be lateral flow testing. There's a stretchable point between those five years clearly.
'Between now and January, it's clear that we have committed to testing. We are then reconsidering where we go beyond January, beyond spring.'
Sir Andrew Pollard, part of the team that created the AstraZeneca vaccine, said the Government should end mass asymptomatic testing in schools before January.
Currently, secondary school and college pupils in England are told told to take two lateral flow tests a week as part of measure to curb the spread in classrooms.
If they test positive they have to stay at home until a PCR test confirms they do not actually have the virus at least two days later — even if they are asymptomatic.
Addressing MPs in the same briefing, Sir Andrew said it was was 'absolutely critical we keep children in school'.
He added the biggest impact of the pandemic in children was the psychological effect of being forced to stay home.
Professor Pollard argued only symptomatic pupils — who would already be required to stay home because of their illness — should have to take a test.
He told MPs: 'Clearly, the large amount of testing in schools is very disruptive to the system, whether that is the individual child who is then isolating because they tested positive but they're completely well, or because of the concerns that that raises more widely in the school.
'We're aware of families taking their children out because someone's tested positive in a school.
'So I think there is a huge impact of widespread testing in schools.
'I think probably we need to move in the pandemic, over this winter,
