RE: Department of Health and Social Care We will start pilots of new Lateral Flow tests from next week.17 Oct 2020 07:58
Stolen this from Airline on another board....
Britain will be carrying out a million coronavirus tests a day by Christmas, scientists have predicted. The forecast came after ministers spent more than £500 million in the past fortnight on new laboratory-based testing machines that will more than triple the government’s present capacity of about 300,000 tests a day. In addition schoolchildren will be offered weekly coronavirus screening as early as next week after government scientists approved a new rapid test using a saliva swab. It is being likened to a pregnancy test in that it can give results in as little as 15 minutes without needing to be sent to a laboratory.
One senior scientist involved in the testing programme told The Times: “It’s going pretty well. They have really scaled up their capabilities. By Christmas we’ll be at a million a day, I think. That seems perfectly possible.” He said that the government was buying new testing machines that were capable of providing 150,000 tests a day. These are designed to expand the capacity of the five so-called Lighthouse labs used to process tests. Another type of testing machine could be used to provide intensive and regular testing in hospitals or community hotspots. Produced by the British- based company Oxford Nanopore, it is the size of a desktop computer and can process up to 15,000 tests a day. Separately, pilot trials of the pregnancy-style mouth-swab coronavirus tests will begin in schools and universities as early as next week in infection hotspots in the north of England. They will provide the most tangible sign yet that Boris Johnson’s “moonshot” plan of regular tests for everyone in the country might become a reality. It is hoped that testing could be used over the winter to stop whole school “bubbles” having to isolate if one pupil becomes ill. Hospitals will also start using separate 20-minute tests that will require technicians. Millions of both types have already been bought and Mr Johnson said the government had “started building the infrastructure for domestic manufacture of these tests, ensuring that Britain has the ability to produce millions of fast tests here”. Monthly testing of everyone in Britain could be enough to keep the virus under control if contact tracing is working and people stick with social distancing and hygiene measures, according to calculations by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
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