Lateral flow testing on asymmetric people is a dangerous one11 Jan 2021 13:43
England is about to start testing people without symptoms using cheap lateral flow tests which don’t detect Covid without symptoms, instead of PCR testing like Novacyt, which does. It doesn’t make sense.These lateral flow tests which are going are going to be rolled out for everyone in England not showing symptoms when the se lateral flow tests are the ones that will always show people without symptoms as negative, even though they may be asymptotic and carriers.. It just sends more carriers back into the community. They only test positive when symptoms are displayed. It doesn’t make sense at all. In fact it is sheer madness but no doubt they will order Novacyt tests when it all fails miserably - which it will. There are many scientists voicing concerns about lateral flow testing, this is just one of them. January 10, 2021 - expert reaction to government announcement that asymptomatic testing is to be rolled out across country starting next week The government has announced today that community testing offer is to be expanded across all local authorities in England to test people without symptoms. Dr Angela Raffle, Consultant in Public Health and Honorary Senior Lecturer University of Bristol Medical School; Population Health Sciences, said: “The news of further rollout of lateral flow testing is very worrying. Any benefit from finding symptomless cases will be outweighed by the many more infectious cases that are missed by these tests. Already outbreaks are known to have occurred because people have been falsely reassured by a negative lateral flow result, leading them to attend work whilst having symptoms. The test manufacturers only recommend the Innova lateral flow test for use by qualified medical practitioners and in people with symptoms, yet the Department of Health and Social Care is pushing ahead with use in symptomless people, with the test performed by untrained staff or as a self test. This makes an important difference to the reliability. We know from testing at Birmingham University that the test may pick up as few as 2 in every 100 cases that would be positive on PCR testing, and in Liverpool it picked up no more than 40 out of every 100. For the Government to claim that these tests are accurate, reliable and ‘hugely successful’ is dangerously misleading. It could undermine the already struggling test and trace system, because people are likely to choose to get a lateral flow test rather than attending for PCR when they have symptoms.”
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