We can safely assume Boris Johnson will miss the ambitious mass-testing plans outlined in Operation Moonshot

Editorial: After six months of the pandemic, the government is out of excuses as to why we are not where we need to be over Covid-19

The prime minister has made another ambitious promise ( )

There seems to be a sort of informal national competition to discover what is the longest journey anyone has been advised to take in order to get a test for Covid-19.

From Kent to Galashiels, Suffolk to Aberdeen, Denton to Llandudno, Leicester to Edinburgh… an unkind observer might quip that before long the NHS Test and Trace system will invite some individual to go to the moon, hence the name chosen for the prime minister’s astronomically ambitious mass testing programme, Operation Moonshot. Perhaps Elon Musk will be invited to join Dido Harding’s testing team.

There is nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, but Boris Johnson seems to be the only person who believes that, even with £100bn being thrown at it, it is actually practical in the required timescale. Some of the technology required apparently does not yet exist, and it is perfectly possible that a vaccine will be developed, or the pandemic will have burnt itself out by the time the moonshot has landed. Maybe Matt Hancock will prove to be Britain’s answer to Neil Armstrong, but it takes a giant leap of imagination to envisage it.