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"It is being widely reported that recipients of the coronavirus vaccines are finding that the vaccine injection site on their arm has become magnetic.

Can you please tell me:

Whether the MHRA is aware of these reports"

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-responses-from-the-mhra-week-commencing-21-june-2021/freedom-of-information-request-on-reports-of-magnetism-at-covid-19-vaccine-injection-sites-foi-21-545

Yes, the contract basically says that in the worse case scenario, ODX can recoup their reasonable outlay thus far, but there are no penalties, and no minimum payment. In that scenario ODX are left with staffing levels for 2M a week capacity, when at least 1M a week of what was thought to be guaranteed capacity has just disappeared. I say at least 1M, because the infamous certainty of 2M per week in April, leads me to conclude that likely the assumption was uk gov was going to use all of their 2M per week capacity. And in that worse case scenario, what of that £17M worth of equipment. Do they hand it back (so now ODX capacity is 1M a week). Do they get billed for it ? It seemed reasonable to me (way back in feb/march), that after sustained use, the gov would probably right it off, or charge a pretty nominal fee for it. But if it's never used ?

It is a worse case scenario, it still looks more likely than not that ODX will get a gov contract at sometime However other than the fact that outside influences are changing in their favour (i.e. the determination is going to be desktop review etc), there is no news that has come from the company or the gov that gives us any better handle on the timeline to actually supply tests to uk gov, than were we were 2-3 months ago. In some ways in a worst position. Whereas the expectation 4 months+ ago was that we had a gold standard test just waiting for the gov to give the go ahead, the case is now that both the Gov timeline AND the timeline to progress the new visitect test thru usability to the point that it's fully ready to be selected has to be considered.

...and
Q209: Is there a penalty payment the DHSC has to make if they decide not to proceed with the contract?
No.

All of the public information on the redacted manufacturing agreement has been publicly disclosed by the Government and can be viewed here: https://bidstats.uk/tenders/2021/W18/750321856

https://www.ppe4trade.com/visitect-rapid-finger-prick-antibody-kit

That test is dead.
From the Q&A

Q29: Is Antibody Lateral Flow Test Visitect still existing product or was it dropped due to lack of commercial interest? Sometimes in your communication with shareholders company itself and Walbrook don’t even mention it anymore as a part of the product range.
With regards antibody test, we are focused on the UK-RTC product, initially this product was for the UK market and our Visitect for other markets, however as both tests are professional tests we didn’t want to compete against each other.

RIP visitect antibody test.

for reference
Q153: The DHSC contract of £50-£374m should they not take it up does omega still get the £50m minimum?
There are no guaranteed minimums as part of the contract

if you perused the Q&A, you'll see that CK said there is no minimum.

I see I'm back to being a notorious shorter today.

A lot of folks on here would fit right in with the anti-vax mob, happy to jump into any wild conspiracy theory that eases their mind.

ca-ching...another 5p for this post....lol !

someone needs to tell the SP, it isn't listen.

Computer909, thanks for that didn't previously see the volumes.

Okehurst1.
That Thriva contract is for home testing, and then the samples are sent to the lab. Antibody test in this country is about quantative not qualative testing, a yes/no test isn't terribly useful. And the line strength chart thing isn't a mass goer IMO.

CK himself said that his view is that the RTC LFT customers will come from countries that do not have a systemic vaccination program in place, in which scenarios a +ve LFT indicates who has had covid, possibly allowing vaccinations to be targeted at those that don't have a response.

"On the matter of Tweets in Feb, this preceeded the failure of Mologic's s AG LFT by PHE in March. It is my belief Mologic's test was set to be used as DHSC test of choice before this failure, leading to subsequent Innova extension among other things."

But the serious issue I have with that is when the company says "this april we'll deliver 2M lft per week", it is an absolute, a completely done deal. Everyone reading that rightly assumed that purchase orders where placed, machinery was in place, etc and other than a natural diasater, LFTs would be produced at 2M a week in April. This was only further reinforced by the fact that the company before (and indeed since) that time had never stated either historic or future production levels.

As it happens at the time of the tweets, it was impossible to supply the test they were referring too, as at that time it had not passed PD, and by extension, there were no purchase orders.

The production of LFTs in april was conditioned on several things, whereas the statement was unconditional.

Putting all the s*ite to one side, hope you get over it fine, feeling ill is crappy and with this thing going around, just the fear of what if can be scary.

Its the comparison between the ICU figures in Feb and today that alarms me. Don't know if rest of the UK is as bad as here, but at the height of Feb, we had 68 in ICU with covid. That was with most of the population not vaccinated. Now with virtually 80% of adults vaccinated, our ICU count is 47.
Health board pointed out that the majority of those were not vaccinated, however, it shows how much more active this delta variant is. To extrapolate back to Feb with just about everyone unvaccinated, that would have been over 200 in ICU from covid alone (which is more than the beds we have). Now of course there was a lock down in Feb, whereas fundamentally people are unhindered these days, but even so.

"That article states that the government plans to upscale use of antibody tests to 13,000 per day!..from current levels of 2,500 per day..over the next 18 MONTHS. So who said antibody testing was a dead duck ? No way Thriva can supply these levels on its own"

13K a day is only 91K a week, 7.1M over the 18 months mentioned... it's hardly massive quantities.
Thriva was awarded a £124M contract supply antibody testing over the next 18 months.
https://bidstats.uk/tenders/2021/W29/755302519

@ 7.1m that would be about £17 a test which is far too much, so either more tests are expected, or as we know, these award amounts are often maximums and not necessarily the amount that will be paid.

So fine until some indepth questions, then nicely not answered...got it.

okehurst1, good article.

Convex, how dare you come back with actual facts !

you've conveyed information that was not previously on here, which is refreshing for this place.

So are you saying that ODX is redesigning the test so that it passes PHE intransigence on an issue that is not actually an issue otherwise ?

which is at odds with what Mologic said in its last public utterence in June when it issued pre-action legal papers.

"In contrast to the government testing conducted using contrived samples, other studies to validate its SARS-CoV-2 antigen test used clinical samples, according to Mologic. "We've conducted our own analysis of the results obtained through government testing and other independent clinical studies to validate the test and found that the probability of high failure rates is similar to the chance of being struck by lightning," Fitchett said. "

Blaming the "contrived samples", nothing wrong with the test at all.

Everything that is in the public domain from Mologic is that there is no issue, and that it was the nature of the sample (frozen ?) that was the issue. Mologic has not indicated publicly that they are changing their test.

Assuming you are correct, and there is a flaw in the Mologic test, what implications does that have for the FDA EUA approval, which Mologic (not ODX) applied for, based on their unchanged test.

Many here have said forget the UK gov market, The FDA approval is the thing. I don't agree, as already there are 6+ tests in the US that have home approval.

"Always best to have a two sided coin when calling the spin."

As opposed to a single sided coin ?

ODX commercial decisions have resulted in ODX not getting sales. It was their decision to leave themselves in a position that they can not independently garner orders for a product line they can manufacture.

"Wheres all the rampers who said this will hit £1."

They are at a concrete convention ordering bulk supplies for more ramps.