Member Info for Muck165

Yep - the timing of award/tender publications on bidstats is baffling.

We know they did P1, and Perdita B and 8 universities appear to have been involved in that. That seems to have driven appetite to continue the study, which may well be going on now - who knows! It is notable that they expected P2 (clinical validation) to take just 4 weeks so you would expect to see a publication of the results soon, assuming it will have started in December (if it started at all).

Like you suggest, the silence might well be a positive.

Weird! Looks like the bot is attacking GGP and XXT as well

PL - the contract award you posted related to P1 of the MS pilot, which seems to me to have been a feasibility study. Thereafter this was published, which gives more detail about the study, and the timing of further anticipated phases - https://bidstats.uk/tenders/2020/W47/739311716, and also https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:560552-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&WT.mc_id=RSS-Feed&WT.rss_f=Education&WT.rss_a=560552-2020&WT.rss_ev=a

I haven’t seen anything published confirming the award of this tender, and given the tumbleweed I’m not even sure we can assume it was awarded.

TBH, I don’t know what to make of BAMS anymore. On the plus side AS has always seemed very upbeat about it, Adeptrix seem to have moved on by targeting the N protein as well as the S protein and Bruker have now invested in Adeptrix. But on the down side CONDOR seemed to drag its heals with validation and may or may not even be involved now given AVCT seem to have decided to progress their own, and even our own validation seems to be taking its time!

Peto commenting on the study

“We know that lateral flow tests are not perfect, but that doesn’t stop them being a game changer for helping to detect large numbers of infectious cases sufficiently rapidly to prevent further onward spread.’

https://www.bdi.ox.ac.uk/news/lateral-flow-devices-detect-most-infectious-covid-19-cases-and-could-allow-a-safer-relaxation-of-the-current-lockdown

Lovely find PL. Again we see the ref to LFDx in figure 4....

Liked the conclusion that LFT’s would detect between 83.7 and 90.5% of cases leading to onward transmission (ie infectious).

A paper in the Lancet today looking at strategies to reduce quarantine times.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30308-X/fulltext

“Assuming moderate levels of adherence to quarantine and self-isolation, self-isolation on symptom onset alone can prevent 37% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 12–56) of onward transmission potential from secondary cases. 14 days of post-exposure quarantine reduces transmission by 59% (95% UI 28–79). Quarantine with release after a negative PCR test 7 days after exposure might avert a similar proportion (54%, 95% UI 31–81; risk ratio [RR] 0·94, 95% UI 0·62–1·24) to that of the 14-day quarantine period, as would quarantine with a negative LFA test 7 days after exposure (50%, 95% UI 28–77; RR 0·88, 0·66–1·11) or daily testing without quarantine for 5 days after tracing (50%, 95% UI 23–81; RR 0·88, 0·60–1·43) if all tests are returned negative. A stronger effect might be possible if individuals isolate more strictly after a positive test and if contacts can be notified faster.”

Lateral Flow tests seem to be at the centre of all strategies now.

Agree covmutley - seems like there is a drive to get everyone on message prior to a big roll out, and to get that message out to the public.

For example see https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rc41 at about 53.25 mins (Nick Robinson interview this AM), where Deeks criticisms of the LFT gets slated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55751874

yep, and interestingly ODX, ABDX have both ticked up at the same time.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/priorities/covid-19/

Includes - "Invest in next-generation testing, including at home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude."

We may not supply a test directly, but would be great if we could licence the IP across the pond!

I’d also add that this “U.K.” effort re Ag testing may well have been going on since April last year.

Everyone seems to think that the UK- RTC and it’s work developing an antibody test was the only objective/outcome of the “call to industry” that Han**** made at the time.

It wasn’t.

There were four stated aims, with the RTC working to deliver the fourth. See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/industry-responds-to-call-to-arms-to-build-british-diagnostics-industry-at-scale. The third was “ To develop new technology to diagnose coronavirus quicker than ever before and new methods of delivering tests widely across the UK safely”

Would add this into the timeline as well

4/11/20- government orders at least 8 Ginolis LFT manufacturing machines for staged delivery commencing 8/1 (these being the machines both BBI and Abingdon use), and which fits with the PA consulting deliverable to complete ordering of priority manufacturing equipment by 30/11 - https://atamis-1928.cloudforce.com/sfc/p/#0O000000rwim/a/4J000000kEz0/gd0XuecenRmGfvNJwx9Tip6q.G7HQyzUYbjP.tOAUgk

Great post unprecedented. Don’t suppose you have any thoughts or insights on BAMS, and how that might fit in the grand scheme of things in the U.K. or abroad?

For info - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55733327

Forgot to mention one other notable change between the 7 Jan and current version of the web pages I highlighted above, which is the removal of the following;
“
Avacta is actively seeking further partnerships for the Affimer affinity reagents against the SARS-COV-2 spike protein for immunoassay diagnostic development.”

There may be nothing in this at all, but might it perhaps also mean they don’t need any more? Pure speculation I know!

You might be right auro. But we can at least be sure changes to the site were made post Jan 7.

I’ve been having a bit of a play with the way back machine - https://archive.org/web/, which takes snapshots of web pages over time and saves them.

Here is the current Avacta page describing its COVID test work - https://avacta.com/diagnostics/covid-19/

Here is a snapshot of the same page taken on 7 Jan, being the last snapshot date on Wayback - https://web.archive.org/web/20201031112934/https://avacta.com/diagnostics/covid-19/

Interesting that References to Cytiva appear to have been dropped.

Unfortunately the pages Agent B highlights in this thread don’t appear to be saved by wayback, so I can’t see exactly when the text changed. Someone more tech savvy could have better luck!

Looks like early data from SA shows nearly 50% of those with COVID antibodies from previous infection had no neutralising antibody response to the new SA mutation.

https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1351277414576386048

Led by Richard Body, with other academics.

https://www.stemlynsblog.org/vaccines-update-january-2021-st-emlyns/

It’s an interesting listen which discusses the 3 approved vaccines. Most interesting, (and concerning in my view) was the discussion starting about 25 mins in about delaying the second dose. It seems the Pfizer vaccine, for example, has an average efficacy of just 53% during the period between first and second doses, and 95% is only achieved after the second dose. The participants on the podcast all seemed to recognise that delaying the second dose is a real experiment with unknown outcomes

Fair enough Pigster - Mina might disagree.