Member Info for tomvisual

Understand what you are asking. Governments needed to heed the warnings from Dec 2019 and act. They did not put their pandemic planning into overdrive. What was the pandemic plan and where are we now against this Plan? VanV thars a good question for RP!
BBC Click article (iplayer) indicated monitoring algorithms were triggered on 31 Dec 2019.
Trump was in denial (just recently changed this position) and CDC in a mess with their in-house test which put the US on the back foot.
Wrt UK, PrimerDesign was off the blocs and submitted a test to FDA and PHE for evaluation.
FDA sat on this. PHE appear to also have wanted to develop their own in-house solution. Everyone seems to be reinventing the wheel yo save money. Time is the most important variable in a pandemic situation. Still is... So, the question is:
Is the Government going to use a 90-120 min test with 100% homology with over 1700 mutations or a 2/3 day test?
Its up to Boris. I would go for everything you can get. Order what Blair proposed.180M tests. But order the best not the cheapest. PHE have done the evaluations on PCR tests in March 2020. Where is thus report. How did the internal PHE fair? Cost is one thing, but time is another. We are running out of time and the costs being borne by the country mean a test cost is meaningless. Test, test, test.

With the centralised approach being adopted by PHE, lots of available PCR machine resources (labs, university etc) are not being used.
Germany did not go with the centralised approach, hence there daily test rates are much higher....
Please listen to the Today article referenced
R4 Today (1/4/20) 1hour:25 mins in from 6am.

R4 Today (1/4/20) 1:25 in from 6am.
Test ordering needed to be done in Jan/Feb. Testing should not be centralised. Test takes 2-3 hours. High volumes of tests to control quality should have been done in hospitals, not in a few centres - the time lag is too great with the centralised approach.
How do some experts know this and the Government does not?
What test time for response? 90-120 minutes or 2/3 days. Social usefulness may be about to be implemented ventilators. Come on get on with tedting using the the most accurate and fastest method. OMG we are fighting on several fronts.

A further point that Peston could have challenged Prof Van Tam on is this point that Prof Costello made the other day:
While testing may not be appropriate in London, the Midlands and other hot spots, testing and contact tracing would be useful in areas where the infection rate is lower.
How do you respond to that, Prof Van Tam? Is it an, 'epidemiological models at dawn' type of duel to resolve whether Prof Costello's point is valid?

I also wonder how safe antibody tests are:
The position is not so clear on whether the AlphaBiolabs IgM-IgG Combined Antibody Rapid Test is useless / dangerous. The following are taken from their Web page:
* If both the quality control line (C) and the detection line M appears, then the novel coronavirus IgM antibody has been detected and the result is positive for the IgM antibody.
* If both the quality control line (C) and the detection line G appears, then the novel coronavirus IgG antibody has been detected and the result is positive for the IgG antibody.
* Detection of IgM antibodies tends to indicate a recent exposure to COVID-19.
* Detection of IgG antibodies indicates a later stage of infection.
* The sensitivity of our immunoassay is 86.8% (IgM), 97.4% (IgG), with a specificity of 98.6% (IgM), 99.3% (IgG).
Questions include:
* The phrase, 'novel coronavirus IgM antibody' implies, to me, that the IgM antibodies for coronavirus are different, to IgM antibodies from something like flu. A question is whether the AlphaBiolabs test can discriminate between coronavirus IgM antibodies and other antibodies to good probability, so that, largely the test will not give false positive in response to flu. Is this interpretation correct? Or has there been sharp practice in the wording to imply that the test can largely ignore IgM from flu, when in fact, the test can make no such distinction?
However, even if there are false positives caused by flu, this could still get some medics back to work.
Are the tests Sensitivity and Specificity good enough for medics?
Any technical expertise here?

It has increasingly been looking as if PHE has been favouring its own test, when it would have been better for everyone if the faster test from Primerdesign had been used.
If Boris is going to do anything to marginally redeem himself, he should bang some heads together and say, 'GET THE PRIMERDESIGN TEST ROLLED OUT IN ALL THE LABS AVAILABLE IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. YOU WILL REPORT TO ME DAILY WITH AN UPDATED GANTT CHART, SO I CAN SEE YOU ARE DOING WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD.'

It has increasingly been looking as if PHE has been favouring its own test, when it would have been better for everyone if the faster test from Primerdesign had been used.
If Boris is going to do anything to marginally redeem himself, he should bang some heads together and say, 'GET THE PRIMERDESIGN TEST ROLLED OUT IN ALL THE LABS AVAILABLE IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. YOU WILL REPORT TO ME DAILY WITH AN UPDATED GANTT CHART, SO I CAN SEE YOU ARE DOING WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD.'

VanV, ok
Additionally do we not have a chemical industry that the Government can galvanise to support the effort against covid19?
At the start of the pandemic someone mentioned "war" as not being the correct phrase. I think we must wage war on all fronts to save lives.
Gnatt charts will become of interest in identification of critical paths.

VanV, yes please.

R4 Today 8:33 onwards.
Prof Fortune interviewed. Only way out of this in order to get to other side is vaccine (or therapeutics) or herd immunity.
Comprehensive serialogical testing is essential.
In fragile health care systems around the world sadly they will have to use herd immunity. Sobering...
Begs the question why was herd immunity a starting point for the Government with minimal testing as this has put us on the back foot - we are not a third world country.
Vaccine 12 months + away.
R4 Today has brilliant articles this morning

Important point is testing is required.
test, test, test.
NYCT I applaud you tonight!

Peston now need to ask conformance of Roche, Thermo Fisher and NCYT tests to positive test cases and monitoring for mutations. PHE made an assessment in March 2020.
Results please...
NCYT world leader.

Listening to R4 8:15 on 2/4/20
PHE seem to want to go with their in-house test.
The PHE PCR test takes 2/3 days for result, Novacyt 90-120 minutes. This delta time is now critical. Novacyt 100% conformance to positive test cases.

We need to go with the most accurate and FASTEST test. The Novacyt test!
VanV please listen to Today on iplayer/Sounds. Good question for RP ?

Dailiy Mail editorial straight to the jugular
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8178335/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Testing-way-end-Prime-Minister-grip.html
Ectracts:
If there is a shortage of testing kits, why are UK firms selling huge quantities to the Earth's four corners?
Plainly, the buck stops with Mr Johnson, who is in grave danger of letting control of the crisis slip from his grasp.
Boris must - urgently - appoint a dedicated minister for testing, with a free hand to do whatever works. The time for complacency is over.
gla

Watched the briefing.
Just flannel on the evening standard journalist"s questions on:
* Specifically what reagents are in short supply?
* What is the time line for getting to 25,000 tests / day and higher numbers?
* What will the number of tests be in 1 week's time?
* Why is Germany testing so many more people? Shortage of equipment?

All those questions ignored.

Which test was the Eurofins equipment destined for?
Which countries?

VanV, thanks.
Its important that the nation gets the correct tests- irrespective if supply. This must be true for other countries. The FDA EUA may have been used as a proxy for quality. Now hopefully we can all get independent verification of the FDA EUA tests.
Our 100% homology with the 1743 full length good quality SARS-CoV-2 sequences published on the GISAID EpiCoV databas puts NCYT in a good place. You always said it was our Golden Goose. Let the Goose now fly......
gla

Part 2

10. Please can the results of the epidemiological modelling, of the effects of recent social distancing measures, be presented?
A standard method of presentation is a graph of deaths per 10 million people per day, on logarithmic axis, plotted against days after the first death, on linear axis. It is appreciated that there will be uncertainties in the estimates, a problem that can be addressed by presenting upper, lower and central estimates. A graph of this type will also allow comparison with other countries.

11.The present format of the briefings does not allow the questioner to reply to the answers that have been given and point out where the answer given is deficient, at odds with known facts, or to suggest precisely the information that should be provided. There has been far too much shifty evasion and this needs to stop.
At the moment it is too much like PMQs where Government Ministers can simply not answer, willfully misrepresent and bluster. The briefings need a moderator of unimpeachable integrity - in previous days we could have had a Brian Walden, a Robin Day or a David Dimbleby - to keep order and make sure questions are answered properly and honestly, which at the moment they are not.

1/4/20

1.Three suppliers have been down selected to provide the UK with a covid 19 PCR test. Can the Government advise whom these suppliers are?

2. In March 2012 PHE evaluated various test systems to identify Covid 19.
See https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/guidance-and-sop-covid-19-virus-testing-in-nhs-laboratories-v1.pdf

Can the results from the PHE assessment be declared by the Government?

3.Roche declared problems with their test (cobas SARS-CoV-2) at the time of their FDA EUA application. What percentage compliance to positive test cases does the Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 test have?

Was this independently verified during the PHE assessment?

4.It is noted that in March 2020 Thermo Fisher took over Qiagen for $11.1B.
The PHE assessment reviewed the Qiagen QIAstat-Dx test but not the Thermo Fisher TaqPath test.

FDA EUA was granted to Thermo Fisher for the TaqPath test on 12/3/20.
FDA EUA was granted to Qiagenfor the QIAstat-Dx test on 30/3/20.

What test is the UK considering from Thermo Fisher?
What percentage conformance to positive test cases can the Government confirm for the Thermo Fisher test?

5.The Thermo Fisher test (TaqPath) was the first test to receive the FDA EUA approval (12/3/20). This application took 8 hours to approve. At time of the PHE assessment, why was this test not in the PHE evaluation?

6.The Qiagen (QIAstat-Dx) test had not received the FDA EUA approval at time of the PHE assessment. Why was this test considered in preference to the NCYT test for UK procurement?

7. The science behind the NCYT test is unassailable and compelling and that is why it remains at the top of the assay table.
The UK's Primerdesign (PCR) test provides an 'unmatched [diagnostic] tool' which has '100% homology' with Covid-19 and is one of the most accurate available. As of 27th March 2020 PrimerDesign can comfirm 100% homology with the 1743 full length good quality SARS-CoV-2 sequences published on the GISAID EpiCoV database.
Was the Government aware that the PrimerDesign test has a test time of 90-120 minutes?

9.For the provision of PPE and achieving 25,000 and 100,000 tests per day: Please can the public see the Gantt charts for achieving these objectives, so the following can be reviewed: the targeted end date; the dependencies; the critical path; and progress against the programme. This request is made necessary by the continued abject failure to deliver programmes to time. It simply will not do to pretend that the Gantt charts do not exist, since Gantt charts are the standard method of project planning.

Part 2 later

VanV yes. Working on it. Deadline?

VanV one other bigger picture point
We have to see the Gantt charts, so we could see: the targeted end date; the dependencies; the critical path; and progress against the programme.

VanV points
1.Whom are the 3 suppliers to the uk for test ?2.Roche test has reported 91% conformance with positive test cases. If they are in the 3 to supply phe, why? Is the Govt aware of independent report? Roche declared problems with their test at the time of their FDA EUA.
2. What test is the uk using from Thermo Fisher?
The 8 hour FDA EUA application TaqPath test or the 30/3/20 FDA EUA Qiagen test, QIAstat-Dx test.
3. Has the down selected TF test been verified by PHE in the 16/3/20 report?
4.If the TF test (TaqPath) had received the FDA EUA approval at time of the PHE assessment, why was this test not in tge PHE evaluation?
5.If the TF test (QIAstat-Dx) had not received the FDA EUA approval at time of the PHE assessment, why was this test considered in preference to the NCYT test for uk procurement?
6. The science behind the NCYT test is unassailable and compelling and that is why it remains at the top of the assay table. It is under constant review by the scientists' at Primerdesign, to ensure it remains locked down and ahead of this virus. It has been described as an 'unmatched [diagnostic] tool'. Why were PHE/ Govt not aware?
7.What % conformance to positive test cases can the Govt state for the 3 products being supplied for UK PCR testing?
8. Was the Govt aware the NCYT test has a test time of 90-120 minutes?