PCR will be dead soon25 Jul 2020 16:37
Okay, controversial clickbait title! But I really do believe this is going to be the case (expect for in hospitals).
We've all known for some time that poor swabbing can give false negatives. This is very dangerous because those who are infected will think they've got some other bug and go about their business spreading the disease.
We know that the PCR machines are highly accurate, I do not dispute this. The problem is that if you put a poor quality swab through the machine it doesn't matter how good the equipment is.
Earlier this week one of my staff said her daughter had a cough and she was going to go with her to the local testing station in Portsmouth. She didn't know how long the result would take, which of course meant she couldn't come to work until it was received.
Two days later I had a message to say it's negative, all fine. Nice and quick - great, back to work.
I saw her yesterday and asked how well her daughter coped with it because they're very unpleasant or even painful. She said it was fine and she did them both herself. I was amazed by this.
Getting to the point here... what happened is they arrived at the testing station expecting to be swabbed through the window by somebody (like we've all seen the photos of no doubt), but this isn't what happened. They were given two testing kits and told to get on with it.
I've got a photo of the instructions and it reads as follows "Put the swab into one nostril until you feel a slight resistance (about 2.5cm or 1 inch up your nose). Rotate the swab for 10-15 seconds and then remove it."
I was amazed by this, as my understanding was that a good swab needs to come from the back of the nasal cavity. Of course, difficult for somebody else to do, let alone yourself or a child.
This lead me to some Googling and articles such as this (yes, this one is the Daily Mail I know, but it's actually a good article) shorturl.at/ezBDR
New case numbers in the UK are very low, but this is hardly surprising if my staff members experience at the testing station is representative of the rest of the country.
So why might this nonsense be happening? Well, another controversial comment here perhaps - but my guess is that the Government are turning a blind eye. They've been making a lot of promises on testing numbers and continue to talk about it's importance. Now... the problem is that no matter how good your capacity to run tests... if nobody is turning up to the stations because it's incredibly uncomfortable or painful... you aren't going to have a hope of meeting your targets.
I know there's not much excitement about BAMS, but if it's able to overcome this problem by running easy to take saliva samples it's going to have a massive impact IMO. It's also shows how important the LFA is (although I think we all agree on that anyway).
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