'Utter shambles': GPs and medics decry NHS (England) test-and-trace system

[Northerner]

Doctors have criticised the coronavirus testing system as “an utter shambles” after it emerged that some are being told to undertake round trips of up to 522 miles to get swabbed.

Hospital medics and GPs have described how delays of up to four days to get a test and five days to receive the result forces them to isolate and means they cannot work normally in the NHS.

A dossier of cases being collated by the Doctors’ Association UK discloses how a male GP in Margate in Kent who was displaying symptoms was told to travel 266 miles to Leeds in West Yorkshire to have a test.

In another case a hospital doctor in Basildon, Essex, had to undertake a 500-mile round trip to Glenfield hospital in Leicester. When the occupational health department at his NHS trust could not provide a test they advised him to use the test and trace website instead.

'Utter shambles': GPs and medics decry NHS test-and-trace system

England’s medical personnel forced to self-isolate due to logistic problems besetting Covid-19 tests

www.theguardian.com

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

World Class Utter Shambles?

 

[grovesy]

We are in Essex my son tried for 3 days to get any type of test, he managed to book one on Friday for Sunday, only because he got a special link for Local Authority Workers. This was a Drive in at the local Hospital, there and back within 15 min.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

One useful (though rhetorical) question journalists might use is to ask what the daily test capacity means given that we never seem to do more than about 60% of those tests (and usually it's around 50%).

If we ignore the antibody tests (capacity is allegedly 120,000 but we do 5,000 or so tests a day) and just count the ones people actually want (antibody tests aren't available to most people and aren't what we want anyway) it's still maximum of about 85% and usually more like 70-80%.

 

[Eddy Edson]

"Capacity" is a pretty useless metric versus how many actually get done; which is a pretty useless metric in the absence of info about how long it takes to get a test done and to get the result; which has limited use in the absence of info about what action results from a positive test.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

"Capacity" is a pretty useless metric versus how many actually get done; which is a pretty useless metric in the absence of info about how long it takes to get a test done and to get the result; which has limited use in the absence of info about what action results from a positive test.

Knowing how many actual people have been tested would also be useful.

 

[grovesy]

Son has just got result in 18 hours negative.

 

[Eddy Edson]

Knowing how many actual people have been tested would also be useful.

Indeed.

Victoria here continues to seem like a little reflection of the UK when it comes to the plague - in this respect, bureaucrats bandaiding the test/trace capability via outsourcing and consultants (in this case, E&Y) with a profusion of incompatible systems making reporting a nightmare. In Vic this gets handled by reporting a combined number of people tested every day, then subtracting duplicates from previous days as the reporting catches up.

The bureacurats in Vic were too smart to accept the offer Salesforce made to all the states back in March, to handle the integration quickly and seamlessly, for a pittance. My guess is that E&Y advised them not to accept.

 

[Eddy Edson]

Son has just got result in 18 hours negative.

Excellent!

 

[grovesy]

Yeah.

 

[Amity Island]

522 miles to get swabbed.

For what reason? The PCR test doesn't tell you if you are infectious or not, only positive or negative. Not much benefit of doing mass testing if you can't tell if people are infectious is there?

 

[Northerner]