Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
“There is going to be a diagnostics explosion....” is a quote from Professor Jonathan Weber, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College around 12 minutes into this webinar at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbx04ES6KdI. Professor Weber chairs a panel of experts discussing how Imperial’s new Institute of Infection is bringing together clinical, medical, engineering, natural science, and economic researchers, to turn fundamental discoveries into interventions that will save and improve lives globally.
“There is going to be a diagnostics explosion....” is a quote from Professor Jonathan Weber, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College around 12 minutes into this webinar at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbx04ES6KdI. Professor Weber chairs a panel of experts discussing how Imperial’s new Institute of Infection is bringing together clinical, medical, engineering, natural science, and economic researchers, to turn fundamental discoveries into interventions that will save and improve lives globally.
Try https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x
Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection
Delighted to see the RNS today; a total switch from down down down with widespread insults to people beginning to look forward. There is no point looking back and before you ask yes I'm under water and down massively on paper. Sure the SP will be up and down over the coming months and be hard to predict but I suspect income from Covid related tests are going to fade more gently than some believe - just read https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/covid-will-never-become-an-endemic-virus-scientist-warns.html. Covid has led to a fundamental change with tests being done at home. My wife and I have been doing ONS tests at home for over a year now with PCR and also Antibody blood tests. Today I got my DNA saliva kit for the Covid-19 vaccine Immune Genetics study - https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/covid-19/covid-19-infection-survey/covid-19-vaccine-immune-genetics With ProMate or some other development what will Novacyt produce next? I think we can safely say it will be produced to meet a market need wherever that may be.
@hillseeker, yes I thought that after I wrote it. That's made me think further though as it could be rather handy for the other 500+ tests ...that is if they have a patent on the q machine (or can patent something on any future version of a Q type machine). So there could be more in this than I thought... so thanks for your reply. I'll drop line to Mandy. All the best.
Hill seeker - your analogy of printer and cartridge reminds me of a feature of the Patent Box. I recall from a briefing that if the printer has a patent on it then sales of the cartridge also qualifies for the reduced 10% rate of corporation tax on profit - see https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-the-patent-box. I hope Novacyt are aware of this as could help going forward.
Airline, please encourage your friend (and mum) to call the ambulance. The lower the O2 is will make things increasingly difficult. As to normality my daughter in law got it a second time. Fully triple jabbed and no pre-existing morbidities. Three lateral flows were negative but she felt rotten so had a PCR - positive. Her teenage daughter also got it again in spite of being jabbed. Friends are reporting similar in their families. Even more crazy now is that those double jabbed can fly in (from Denmark with BA2 dominant) catching it on the plane and freely go around passing it on. Normality is wave after wave although hope no tsunamis.
Hi LW, agreed in so far as acquisition would be a bigger step but I guess some of their targets might not be out of reach whilst the DHSC cloud still hangs about. In the meantime I would love to know how things are going at IT-IS - get the cooking pots out there and then sell all the different ingredients.
"Have a little faith, baby have a little faith"
Well I bought again on Friday afternoon investing the last £10k of cash held in my SIPP. Over 50% underwater but went deeper given the crazy low price. I expect to see my patience still being tested and can't say the absence of direct news hasn't been frustrating. We all want Covid to end but recalling somewhere five year contracts it may periodically drop but won't be vanishing. From my experience with R&D intensive companies they often run short of funds. The calculations today have reassured (thanks to those involved) that regardless of the DHSC they have plenty to service the costs of developing non-Covid business at scale. The ship will then steady. The pace and smarts of the R&D team has been amply demonstrated over the last two years. Add in the surveillance and now the sales team hitting the ground my faith has grown. Silence has now been broken and interviews will get better. I fully expect we will learn something of interest before April, but anyhow that's not long in business terms. Thanks to all the sensible posters and those who do research.
Hi Prime, Daughter in law got it a second time. Fully triple jabbed and no pre-existing morbidities. Three lateral flows were negative but she felt rotten so had a PCR - positive. Those double jabbed can clearly have it and pass on to others double jabbed (or not?) and then wander around the UK without bothering to do any test. Ho hum. Take care.
Chas I can provide something of an answer but forgive me if I am repeating things well known. My guess is you may have the Chinese made Flowflex test supplied by the NHS Test & Trace? In the Swiss report at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.18.2126801 it was the best of the seven tested. They found Flowflex's sensitivity to Delta was 91.2% dropping to 88.9% for Omicron. (The other six tests varied in Delta Sensitivity down to 52.9% and 22.2% for Omicron!)
The earlier tests supplied by the "NHS" were from Innova and labelled made by Xiamen Biotime in China. Those were the tests banned by the FDA in the States and didn't feature amongst the seven LFTs considered in the Swiss report.
By way of contrast with Novacyt see http://novacyt.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Ncyt-Omicron_2021-12-15-12-01-27.pdf :"PathFlow® COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Pro is a CE Marked LFT for professional use detecting SARS-CoV-2 antigens using either anterior nasal samples or nasopharyngeal samples to provide results in approximately 15 minutes. When using nasal swab specimens, the test demonstrated a sensitivity of 93.5% and specificity of 99.3% and when using nasopharyngeal swab specimens, it demonstrated sensitivity of 93.4% and specificity of 99.4%. Both sampling methods were tested against 316 samples. This product is available immediately."
Then on 15th December regarding Omicron they said "Pathflow COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Pro targets the nucleocapsid protein (NP) of the SAR-CoV-2 virus. It therefore avoids the problematic spike (S) protein region. This is important because Omicron has more mutations than other variants, including more than 30 mutations in the Spike gene. Based on our analyses, we can report that the regions targeted by our product are not affected by the mutations associated with Omicron (BA.1 & BA.2), and other Variants of Concern (VoC)." see http://novacyt.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Ncyt-Omicron_2021-12-15-12-01-27.pdf
So there we have it. There are some really rubbish products about and perhaps one from British R&D that is really good given the variants we should continue to expect.
It surprised me to see the HMG antibody survey link today as the ONS has been doing monthly antibody testing for some time having begun with PCR testing back in autumn 2020. Maybe repeating myself but my wife and I had our first antibody tests in February last year, but we both failed to reach the threshold (Ist jab was in January). After 2nd jab in April we had monthly tests from May and I passed that one. My wife is immunocompromised on MTX but she took a holiday from the drug and after the booster has now been positive for antibodies (ONS threshold is over 42ng/ml) for the last three months not that we are coming out of our bunker very often! You can read about the ONS Antibody Survey at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodyandvaccinationdatafortheuk/latest# If you read down there is some good stuff including a link to their blog on antibodies and immunity - see https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/04/28/antibodies-and-immunity-how-do-they-relate-to-one-another/
DRB, thanks for the research. Of course a LFT result could be included in the Government's figures but that will be reliant on the public to do that (when they might be feeling poorly). So my guess is a lot of people won't bother hence the figures reported by Government will be under reported and look better than they are.
As an engineer (but also with IP, business and marketing qualifications) I have often said that engineers can make companies go broke as we can end up just tweaking the product the whole time rather than making it, scaling up and getting revenue from the domestic and international markets. In the case of Novacyt I believe they have highly capable R&D staff, hence the plethora of different tests and applications. Their early to market test(s) responding to Covid has resulted in a cash pile and we now have additional staff brought in to market the products along with the Q machines to run the tests. I recall running a business model many years ago where I put all the profit back into R&D and nothing into marketing (relying on competitors to raise market awareness). After several iterations the software ran into a problem in that it couldn’t display all the digits in the profit. I see parallels with Novacyt. I cannot explain the silence and wish it was different, but see innovation here resulting in gold if you can hang on to the goal. (All copywrite acknowledged.)
Dear All, you can now get a free antibody test by visiting https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-antibody-tests/coronavirus-covid-19-antibody-tests
Pleased to say that arthritic wife on immunosuppressants now passes the test, not that we are in any way being complacent. Stay safe everyone and protect each other.
Just been reading this report from earlier this year which reinforces my thinking. First there must surely be surge testing going on? Secondly the level of PCR testing has to be increasing as the stats will eventually confirm. Two paragraphs stand out for me
“The best combination of the available multiple testing modalities over the autumn and winter 2021/22 will depend on whether the epidemic is large and continuous, or composed of multiple smaller outbreaks. As new COVID-19 outbreaks are identified, surge testing will be required. This testing will often be geographic but targeted to micro-communities seeing enduring high levels of transmission. Local government and other providers will be central to maximizing coverage.”
“Unless infection rates stay very low, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for symptomatic individuals is likely to be needed this winter to identify cases, provide care and prevent onward transmission. This will be important in hospitals, where testing of admissions should continue as both an important clinical tool, and as a surveillance measure.” Infection rate is VERY high so I expect PCR to grow very high.
Read the full section on testing on page 32 of Covid -19: Preparing for the future: Looking ahead to winter 2021/22 and beyond at https://acmedsci.ac.uk/file-download/4747802
Sonic' yes you are correct. My wife and I both participate in the ONS monthly survey with PCR and antibody tests. Wife on immunosuppressants for arthritis so kept coming up negative. Stopped her drugs for 10 days before the booster and finally came up positive for antibodies. We hope that continues but time will tell. See my history if you want more background. It's best if people are not complacent and take measures to stay safe.
Astra' have been doing saliva tests on staff for ages and now they are pooling samples with their family members. What a sensible idea.
We need decent tests PCR, LFT and Antibody full stop. We were fortunate to be invited onto the ONS monthly study last November. They started with PCR tests once a month. So far so good for my wife and I still using our FFP3 face masks as appropriate. They then added antibody blood tests - mine were always positive; wife suffers from arthritis and was on immunosuppressant (MTX) so was always negative. Researching things such as https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/third-primary-covid-19-vaccine-dose-for-people-who-are-immunosuppressed-jcvi-advice/joint-committee-on-vaccination-and-immunisation-jcvi-advice-on-third-primary-dose-vaccination? she took an MTX "holiday" and 10 days later had her booster. After another 23 days had the next ONS tests and she tested positive for antibodies. Yipee! Stayed off MTX for a bit longer so Flu vaccine could get a grip. There are many people with arthritis on MTX or similar having had transplants or simply the elderly will weak immune systems. Hope this helps everyone. Stay safe and remain patient as we look forward to the DHSC paying their way.