Not seen the clip, but there’s been ‘doubts’ for ages. Minimised if everyone was using them twice a week though because of course the chance of missing it gets reduced every test. And since we all can do that it seems sensible to me to do it.
Balanced enough clip, and message of regular usage is most helpful, questions about accuracy will continue with any test, questions about cost of £2bn contract, usage as one off testing, e.g. sports events etc and blocked foi requests continue
Yeah can see the point as a ‘passport’ into events. Earlier messages were the test was a ‘stop’ you doing something test, as opposed to a ‘go’ and do something test.
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4787.full.pdf "Innova’s poor sensitivity in asymptomatic people in field settings should have been expected. The largest and most realistic study within the Porton Down/Oxford evaluation (of tests done by Boots employees) reported only a 58% detection rate, even in mainly symptomatic people." The results of the Innova evaluation published today show: The specificity of the test was recorded as 99.68% - the overall false positive rate was 0.32%, although this was lowered to 0.06% in a lab setting. It has an overall sensitivity of 76.8% for all PCR positive individuals but detects over 95% of individuals with high viral loads, and minimal difference between the ability of the test to pick up viral antigens in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. Garbage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you think this is OK, imagine if it was a pregnancy test.
I had to do a test to get into yesterday's game, it was fairly straightforward (if a little unpleasant), but what surprised me, was it depends entirely on your honesty, as you have to self-confirm the result (I actually took the tests with us to the game, so they could see the results themselves, but they only wanted to see the app confirmation).
I know what you’re saying but they’re not supposed to be used by anyone with symptoms. If you have symptoms go for a PCR test (the Humber Bridge type) The whole point of how they’re being used is so that everyone who hasn’t got symptoms can test themselves twice a week to help you find out if you have it without symptoms. So yes there will be some missed, but if you’re doing them twice a week then there’s a much better chance one test will find it, and at least some people without symptoms will find they have it so they can do something to stop themselves spreading it. The alternative is just crossing your fingers, so even if they’re not as accurate they’re better than nothing, and why wouldn’t you use them? As for using them to open sporting events from one test that doesn’t seem to fit with the other guidance on how they’re used, so I suppose they are just accepting some will get in with it but at least the test will find a few that wouldn’t know. If they do want to use them for a ‘passport’ into games, then they probably should require people to have a test record showing they’re doing it twice a week for at least 2 weeks beforehand?
Thats not me saying it Thats Porton Down!!!!!! The Governments own Research Establishment!!!!!!!!!!!! What worries me is that a hell of a lot of time and money has been put into a test which is, frankly, CRAP. I have heard of more reliable and accurate tests now available but we persist with one that is, at best, poor There are reports of families stopping using them at schools due to the consequences of false positives. I am aware that they operate on trust, I wonder how many negative tests were never taken.
I think false negatives are more likely, there was something about how different people, joe public, a health worker and a health worker doing the swabs day in day out got differing results. Not easy sticking that stick up your nose and then to the back of your throat.
Population of UK = 66.67 million Incidence of false positives 0.32 % Tests per week 2 66,670,000 x 0.32/100 x 2 = 426,688 False positives a week Plus those from International travellers
The standard calculation of false positive rate is based on the number of positive tests that actually turned out to be negative and not the percentage of all tests done that are erroneously reported as positive. For example, the Porton Down review of testing in Liverpool showed that in a sample of 630 positive tests, 400 we're in fact negative - a false positive rate of around 63.5 per cent. A later study of students self testing under observation at Birmingham University revealed a false negative rate of 96.7 percent - 2 cases detected from 7500 screenings whilst parallel testing with PCR found 60 true positives. I'm working from memory here but I did post the results (fully referenced at the time) back in late December or early in January.