Doubts over 'rapid turnaround' Covid tests pledged by Johnson

[Northerner]

The “rapid turnaround” coronavirus tests the prime minister announced on Saturday are not approved for the public to interpret themselves without an expert’s help and so will not provide results in the promised 15 minutes, the Guardian has learned.

Boris Johnson’s briefing about this week’s national lockdown in England included the promise of a mass rollout of “tests that you can use yourself to tell whether or not you are infectious and get the result within 10 to 15 minutes”, which would be made available at universities and across whole cities.

He said the army would be deployed to roll out the “many millions of cheap, reliable and above all rapid turnaround tests” everywhere they were needed.

Three of these rapid antigen tests, called lateral flow tests, have passed an assessment by Porton Down with Oxford University. The government has bought one of them. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced the government had signed a deal for 20 million, from the company Innova Tried and Tested, on 19 October.

But the Innova tests are not for people without symptoms, such as university students or people wanting to get on a plane or go to the theatre. They are designed for people who already have Covid symptoms. And the devices, which look like a pregnancy test, are intended to be read by a healthcare professional.

Doubts over 'rapid turnaround' Covid tests pledged by Johnson

PM promised public could get results in ‘10 to 15 minutes’ but tests are designed for lab staff

www.theguardian.com

 

[grovesy]

The more I see of Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock they remind me of a manger I had who was useless, she told you what she thought you wanted to hear and promised the earth but delivered nowt!

 

[mikeydt1]

it is that thing called seeing and doing even if it is doing nowt.

 

[mikeyB]

Or you could say, all fur coat and no knickers, though I prefer all fart and no s**t. More appropriate for folks who talk out of their arse.

 

[SueEK]

My daughter had a test early Friday morning, told results in less than 48 hours, more likely 24 and got the results last night. Hmmmm!

 

[novonord]

easy to carp, but if pregnancy tests are designed to be read at home, would have thought that saliva tests could also be read at home
which other countries have developed rapid lateral flow tests I wonder?
so public health authorities and government are doing the best they can, I would have thought.
have to admit an interest in Avacta's affimer saliva lateral flow test under development in conjunction with Cytiva here....

 

[martindt1606]

Makes you hope that whoever wins the race for a vaccine is not British. How much trust would you place in a vaccine if the first announcement is made by Johnson, Hancock or any of the advisors they've used to support there press conferences....

 

[novonord]

if you don't trust the British vaccine, then there's no need to have it even if it's the only one that's shown to be efficacious

Makes you hope that whoever wins the race for a vaccine is not British. How much trust would you place in a vaccine if the first announcement is made by Johnson, Hancock or any of the advisors they've used to support there press conferences....

 

[novonord]

Martindt

think your comment shows you have no knowledge of the way drug and vaccine trials are run- they are monitored and assessed for efficacy and safety by an independent drug assessment agency, chma in Europe or FDA in America and not passed or sanctioned by politicians or civil servants though they obviously have an interest in the outcome.
No vaccine can ever be assumed to be completely safe though every effort is made to try to rule out freak serious events by trialling the vaccine in 1000s of subjects in the late stages....

 

[Docb]

Martindt

think your comment shows you have no knowledge of the way drug and vaccine trials are run- they are monitored and assessed for efficacy and safety by an independent drug assessment agency, chma in Europe or FDA in America and not passed or sanctioned by politicians or civil servants though they obviously have an interest in the outcome.
No vaccine can ever be assumed to be completely safe though every effort is made to try to rule out freak serious events by trialling the vaccine in 1000s of subjects in the late stages....

Hi Novonord, I'm guessing you have some real experience of this sort of stuff which is always useful in this sort of discussion so maybe you could help me. There are some advocating that a vaccine should be used if its efficacy was in doubt provided it was safe. I don't like things being labelled safe as if it were an absolute thing because it is not. In terms of a vaccine how would "safe" be defined and would safety and efficacy be determined in the same process and as such be inseparable in terms of timing?

 

[Ivostas66]

Daughter was sent home from school yesterday afternoon with a high temperature. Contacted NHS immediately (2pm) and told a doctor would be in touch asap, but that they are currently 'swamped'. Had a call from a member of their team at 9pm apologising that we had not yet heard from a doctor, we were still on the list, but there were a lot of people ahead of us. He also hinted that they were really struggling with demand. Finally had a call from a doctor at 1am. After lots of discussion and checking on our daughter she advised isolation and booking a test. Told that booking a test should be fairly straightforward (booked one for this morning just 3 miles away no problem), but that as there were now more testing centres and also more cases there is a backlog in the testing process, so what was taking about 48 hours a few weeks ago is now taking longer.

 

[grovesy]

Martindt

think your comment shows you have no knowledge of the way drug and vaccine trials are run- they are monitored and assessed for efficacy and safety by an independent drug assessment agency, chma in Europe or FDA in America and not passed or sanctioned by politicians or civil servants though they obviously have an interest in the outcome.
No vaccine can ever be assumed to be completely safe though every effort is made to try to rule out freak serious events by trialling the vaccine in 1000s of subjects in the late stages....

The problem is politicians are trying to interfer and politcalise it!

 

[novonord]

Hi Novonord, I'm guessing you have some real experience of this sort of stuff which is always useful in this sort of discussion so maybe you could help me. There are some advocating that a vaccine should be used if its efficacy was in doubt provided it was safe. I don't like things being labelled safe as if it were an absolute thing because it is not. In terms of a vaccine how would "safe" be defined and would safety and efficacy be determined in the same process and as such be inseparable in terms of timing?

No specific experience of vaccine programmes: all I can say is the Oxford/Astra Zeneca programme as well as one of the other programmes were briefly halted recently after one of the patients developed what sounded like transverse myelitis, inflammation of the spinal cord, the independent monitoring committee who had access to unblinding then was able to work out whether the patient involved was in the placebo or active arm of the trial and the trial resumed.
The trial remains blinded to the investigators insofar as they don't know who is in the active and who is in the placebo group,
The problem with vaccine trials is it's difficult to rule out the risk of extremely rare events in say 1: 10000 of those vaccinated especially if adjuvants have been used. The USA introduced an emergency vaccine in the 1970s in response to an emerging viral disease, a very occasional Guillain Barre resulted 1 in 5000-10000 and there were some deaths.
As regards efficacy, the trials are designed to power for a certain number of those vaccinated and those receiving the placebo to encounter the virus, the problem will have been that the prevalence of the virus over the summer, at least in the UK, was quite low. Fortunately, the Oxford vaccine was being trialled also in Brazil where the viral prevalence was much higher. But the delay to the outcome of the trial may be due to too few patients having had the virus in either placebo or active group.