The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
Retireby40
The Government instructions for the Innova test are as follows:
"Put the swab gently into one nostril, you may feel
a slight resistance (insert about 1.5cm or about half
an inch). Roll the swab 10 times slowly along the
inside of the nostril. Remove the swab and repeat
10 times in the other nostril."
References to it being a nasopharyngeal test appear to have been removed. Equally, it's not described as an anterior test either. They just call it a 'nasal swab.'
To my knowledge, and some googling seems to confirm I'm not going mad, the Innova test was assessed as a nasopharyngeal swab. Nevertheless, it seems to be getting used as if it's an anterior nasal swab and this must surely be resulting in a huge number of false negatives.
I actually had one of these test kits in my hands on Saturday, and the swab is definitely supposed to be nasopharyngeal. It's massive, waaaay too big for a test which is only supposed to go 1.5cm in.
The Gov must surely know that not only are these tests for use on symptomatic individuals, the swabs arent being taken correctly. Unless they're completely stupid (and granted that's certainly a strong possibility based on their track record this far), they'll want to move away from Innova asap.
Will the initially available tests be Innova? In my opinion yes. But hopefully in a few weeks they'll be ours.
Bella, Sir Al has spoken in the past about conducting a 'lay user study' which is the route to marking for consumer use also.
With the Innova tests which the government are distributing to students, teachers etc, the Government have got around it by re branding the tests and creating a new set of instructions. The tests don't come with Innova's instructions. Furthermore, the Innova test is only supposed to be for use in symptomatic individuals.
You couldn't make it up! Destroying public confidence in lateral flows with all this nonsense.
Good find sperenza. Just posting extracts into here for convenience:
Methods We used nasopharyngeal specimens from unexposed asymptomatic individuals to assess five Ag-RDTs: PanBio™ COVID-19 Ag Rapid test (Abbott), CLINITEST® Rapid COVID-19 Antigen Test (Siemens), SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Test (Roche Diagnostics), SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Test Kit (Lepu Medical), and COVID-19 Coronavirus Rapid Antigen Test Cassette (Surescreen). Samples were collected between December 2020-January 2021 during the third wave of the epidemic in Spain.
The analysis included 101 specimens with confirmed positive PCR results and 185 with negative PCR. For the overall sample, the performance parameters of Ag-RDTs were as follows: Abbott assay, sensitivity 38·6% (95% CI 29·1–48·8) and specificity 99·5% (97–100%); Siemens, sensitivity 51·5% (41·3–61·6) and specificity 98·4% (95·3–99·6); Roche, sensitivity 43·6% (33·7–53·8) and specificity 96·2% (92·4–98·5); Lepu, sensitivity 45·5% (35·6–55·8) and specificity 89·2% (83·8–93·3%); Surescreen, sensitivity 28·8% (20·2–38·6) and specificity 97·8% (94·5–99·4%). For specimens with cycle threshold (Ct) <30 in RT-qPCR, all Ag-RDT achieved a sensitivity of at least 70%, with Siemens, Roche, and Lepu assays showing sensitivities higher than 80%. In models according to population prevalence, all Ag-RDTs will have a NPV >99% and a PPV<50% at 1% prevalence
It's important to remember at this point the Innova test is not approved for use on asymptomatic individuals. It's actually against the usage instructions... Although the government have got around it by re branding and creating their own, incorrect, instructions.
And obviously the sensitivity is rubbish too.
The million dollar question is who's test will be the new one?
Avacta or...
Mologic
Had a grant from the Gov back in 2020 for development. Plus their spin off manufacturing company, GAD, already have a Gov contract along with Omega. But their test is lower sensitivity than Avacta (based on current data). Also, ODX RNS states the capacity for Gov contract is separate to the Mologic test capacity. Equally, we have access to GAD manufacturing capacity via the Mologic agreement...
Surescreen
Have a contract to make 20 million tests. But two tests per week per adult is well over 100million, so that's leaves a big hole. That's not to say manufacturing capacity couldn't be ramped up, though.
or a competitor we don't know about.
I'm with PL75 that we will sell every test we can make regardless of whether they go to the UK Gov or not. But from a share price perspective, I hope "it's us."
I don't believe this has been posted before. If it has, I'm sorry I'm a bit slow.
Christopher McMurran
Product Development Manager at Avacta
Product Development Manager
Avacta
Oct 2020 - Present 7 months
Rapid Test Systems Manager
Omega Diagnostics Group
Dec 2013 - Oct 2020 6 years 11 months
Planning, directing the activities of the development team to enable the development of novel rapid diagnostic tests and facilitate their transfer into Omega Diagnostic’s manufacturing facility.
* To write protocols to validate new equipment needed for both development and manufacture of rapid tests.
* The sourcing of suitable equipment to facilitate the completion of rapid test development projects.
* The sourcing of raw materials to allow the completion of lateral flow development projects and successful transfer to manufacturing (samples, antibodies, other biological raw materials).
Thought it was interesting and worth posting, as there's not much else to discuss for now! Although things might get spicy tomorrow depending on what the haystack has to say...
I'm sorry if this has already been posted, I've just seen this on the MSN home page but haven't been following the chat on here today.
Extract from The Guardian:
"Boris Johnson gives backing to domestic use of Covid passports"
“When it comes to trying to make sure that we give maximum confidence to business and to customers here in the UK, there are three things: your immunity, whether you’ve had it before, so you’ve got natural antibodies anyway; whether you’ve been vaccinated; and then, of course, whether you’ve had a test. And so those three things working together will, I think, be useful,” he said.
The way Boris has said that would indicate he believes the most important thing is a negative test - and rightly so! Vaccine doesn't mean you can't spread Covid-19, so that idea is obviously unworkable. To that effect, I think the Government are letting the vaccine passport stories run their course because they want to encourage the public to take the vaccines, even though the idea of a vaccine passport is fundamentally flawed (although the vaccines will of course help to reduce hospitalisation.)
To a large extent yes, however market makers can hold shares (and will generally do so as park of making a market, at least to some limited extent.) Yes there are two sides to every trade, but if an institutional investor is buying several millions pounds of shares... it's probably a good sign. They are likely to be better informed than private investors. Infact, I believe a lot of private investors don't do a great deal of research at all - something which is also apparent from some of the posts we see on this board!
I think it's likely to be a buy. It's difficult to say for certain as we don't know what period of time it was filled over. If it's been getting filled for a week, it would have to be a sell. However... the volume today was huge!
From 19th to 30th March, around 1m to 3m shares have been traded each day. Today alone, over 9m shares were traded. The order was for around 6.3m shares... therefore the majority, if not all of that order could've been filled today.
So yeah... can't be certain but the price and unusually high volume today would suggest to me it's a buy.
For those who haven't done so, log into your platform, open your Avacta chart and then select the volume indicator from the menus. You'll see how unusually high it is.
Hello everyone, just checking in to add my vote of confidence! It's almost an entire year since I bought my Awacta shares now, it's been quite a journey so far and I remain as confident as ever.
No deadline has been missed. We were told around the end of Q1 - which to my mind is late March to early April. The sentiment of this board always follows the share price movements, not the facts. Sentiment has changed, but the facts remain the same.
Futthermore, lots of new stories at present about about vaccines passports for pubs and events - something which I feel is completely unacceptable and a huge infringement of peoples liberty and free choice. Regardless of personal opinion, one thing most people agree on is peoples right to choose. If the Conservatives imposed this, it was would lose them a huge number of votes in the next election. Forcing/bullying people to take it may also make the public more sceptical and reduce uptake. Also, it would probably make a lot of already struggling pubs go under too. However, asking people to take a test to prove they're negative is not an unreasonable request - assuming the test is cheap, convenient and easy to use.
Then there's the issue of testing in schools. Schools are a massive problem as you've got large members of people from different familes mixing and social distancing just isn't going to happen. The current tests are unfit for purpose and too difficult to use. They need to be replaced. We have strong reason to believe the replacement won't be Mologic or Surescreen (as has already been covered several times). Of course, it's possible another competitor appears out of the blue, but they would also need a reagent which can be manufactured at scale and that would be a problem if using conventional monoclonal antibodies. Ease of manfacture is one of the key benefits of Affimers, along with the sensitivity and specificity they allow.
In my opinion, it's highly likely the Government will push forward with a new testing program involving our LFA's. Not just because they've loaned manufacturing equipment, but because a backup plan is needed.
Things seems to be improving in the UK, however if Covid-19 mutates to evade the current vaccines, that strain will become the prevalent one and could undo the vaccination program within a matter of weeks. The program would then have to start over again once an updated vaccine was available. Short term re-opening aside, not to have a backup plan should the current vaccination program fail would be incredibly foolish.
Anyway... hope everyone is good.
Deadline not missed, everything is fine! Disaster would have meant an RNS, so it's fine and on track.
It's important to remember that we have been told "around the end of Q1"... this seems to have been interpreted by some as "by the end of March"
I wouldn't be suprised to get an RNS today, and equally wouldn't be suprised if was another 3 weeks.
Share price will do it's thing in the meantime.
Boris walks in and with Sir Al, but who's the other guy walking in with them we all wonder?
Well sh*t the bed... It's Giles from directors talk!
Giles takes the reins and kicks it off in his usual soft tones...
"Joining us today is Alastair Smith, CEO at Avacta Group... Alastair, good evening."
"Good evening Giles."
Giles then proceeds to 'interrogate' Sir Al, as Sir Al pretends he didn't write all the questions himself... and starts every answer with his normal opener "Well, that's a great question Giles..."
Anyway... I'm off to do some work. Not sure why I'm bothering now, though. See you all Monday morning for 10 quid a share by 9am.
Annoying that one of the most important pieces of information is omitted, in that our test is Anterior Nasal but Surescreen / Innova are brain ticklers.
Great article, though. Hopefully other media outlets will sit up and pay attention now! Could be an interesting weekend...
Exactly Wiggly. Reading it quickly, one might interpret it as "CE marking by the end of March." Therefore, not going to be selling anything until then.
But actually, that's saying subsequent transfer of CE Mark to Avacta end of March, which is a totally different thing.
I agree the data is sufficient to CE mark. Therefore, we could hear further on this at any moment in time. Anybody thinking they can sit on the sidelines for a while is probably going to be in for a surprise!
Not so sure as it's only initial data. I really do believe there's a reason that the trading update is being held back and I think that reason will become apparent soon.
Boris is giving his roadmap out of lockdown on 22nd February (Monday) and has already said that Lateral Flow Tests are part of the strategy. Maybe he will announce there is a UK consortium to produce accurate tests which are much easier to use and they will be produced at scale here in the UK.
In the past I've refrained from the "Boris is on at 5pm!" excitement... BUT... the timing of this coincides perfectly and all the pieces line up.
Maybe, just maybe, it's the reason.