RE: NHS England advice to Trusts7 Dec 2020 06:06
I had a look at the NHS Lateral Flow Antigen tests document. I did not see anything unexpected, although it could be better:
* There is the overall question of whether Lateral Flow tests are the appropriate method for health care staff. Not really, would be my answer, if there are tests with better S & S available, for example BAMS could be a candidate.
I am much more optimistic about the BAMS test, which could be very useful when very high S & S are required, such as for health workers. This could particularly be true now that it seems that there could be delays to providing mRNA vaccine to front line NHS staff and there is a need to find out who is infected - perhaps both patients and health workers.
OK, so health care staff will be using masks when caring for patients, so staff who are false negatives should be low risk to patients, but when staff are getting into and out of their PPE there could be a risk from staff who are false negatives.
* The intention to continue to roll out the Optigene test is stated, although, as we now know there are shortcomings in the evaluation.
* "Q6. What happens if my test is negative, but I have coronavirus symptoms?" The link is to a general NHS Covid-19 page, where the symptoms list does not include fatigue and headache, which at 82% and 73% of symptomatic Covid-19 cases, are the commonest symptoms according to the King's College / Zoe Covid Symptom app.
Come to think of it, the Chinese were also doing lung X-Ray's as part of the diagnostic procedure for Covid-19.
It all seems so slow and there is an apparent failure to learn from other countries. This is a national emergency. Is this really the best that can be done? I know that there are a limited number of labs and people able to do the test evaluations, but, with the entire UK capability, surely there is more that can be done to evaluate tests expeditiously?
Test, test, test
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