UKH

'The UK has exceeded its target to increase coronavirus testing capacity to 200,000 a day by the end of May'

Do I need to explain why?

Have we figured out how many people those 200,000 tests are covering yet?

While capacity for testing is over 200,000, a little more than 115,000 tests were carried out in the 24 hours up to 09:00 BST on Sunday.

Shame they can’t roll the 85,000 unused tests forwards into tomorrow’s count like mobile phone minutes...

Nope, but I suspect if they'd failed by 5000 and only tested 195,000 you'd be here finding that the most depressing news headline too.

That would be quite good compared to the reality of actually doing 115,000 tests on an “unknown” number of people... 

Is it that other countries have been doing better than that? I've been vaguely not paying my fullest attention to the specifics of how badly things are being managed. 

I know that we should still be being more careful than the relaxing of things suggests, but the ineptitude I agree is depressing (hence why the above).

There was an item on bbc north west news this week where a testing station was being underused.

Less than half the capacity being used and staff stood around doing nothing.

Being the bbc it’s in depth reporting didn’t give the reason for the difference between capacity and actual use.

Incredible, 200,000 tests a day and still absolutely no plan to systematically test healthcare providers and carers who are in and out of covid wards, care homes and the domiciles of the chronically vulnerable on a daily basis. 
It’s almost as if there’s a desire to maintain district nurses and ambulance staff as an ideal CV19 delivery system for those that are supposed to be protected.

And think how they could also do 20000 random sample tests a day to get a good figure on the spread of the virus....

How about you read the headline before posting your response: 'Nope, but I suspect if they'd failed by 5000 and only tested 195,000'...

The headline doesn't SAY they'd tested 200,000. If they had, I would be cheering. But the headline says 'they've exceeded their testing capacity'... 

That 'achievement' is meaningless. The only true test of capacity is how many tests were actually achieved, and how many results returned in a timely manner, i.e. in time for the result to make a difference to behaviour or outcome. More relevantly,  in the small print of that article, we read this:  'For several days, the government has been unable to give figures on the exact number of people who were tested.' I wonder why that was? 

You have been fooled. There's no real shame, because you were supposed to be fooled - It was  quite deliberate. Each word has been chosen with care, by masters of the art, to give an impression of constructive activity, and great progress towards  a master plan that will save us all. But it's meaningless - it's unverifiable, it doesn't relate to any practical outcome, the number chosen was arbitrary so it sounded good. (Incidentally for Track and Trace to work as effectively as it did in S Korea and Australia it is suggested that we actually need 495,000 tests a day - not testing capacity, actual tests.)

Yes, the media are giving the government and health agencies quiet an easy time about apparently not having a coherent plan to use their testing capabilities.  The same thing happened with 100k.

They're not bragging about doing 200,000 tests a day - they're bragging that they 'could' do that if they had the demand...  But otherwise I totally agree - you guys need testing at least weekly, possibly daily, and getting the results the same day. Otherwise it's a waste of time and money.

“Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide” was quite depressing, from slate.com regarding the wave of protests and opportunistic exploitation of protests, across the USA

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/george-floyd-protests-police-vi...

You're right about everything apart from laying all the responsibility at the governments feet. The public too have a responsibility to get themselves tested - it looks like they aren't bothering. Shameful.

Yes, testing capacity and tests are two quite different things, it seems it pays to be rather cynical when it comes to politics.

Vaguely reminds me of when products fail during cycle or outdoor magazine group tests, they're always 'A pre production sample' slightly different to ones being sold in the shops (not that it would stop me buying whatever it is if the company has good product back up, I've just noticed a pattern). 

Back to this government...

The 10 likes on there post speak volumes.  People like simple quipped responses, especially put downs of negative messages, even when the quippy response is totally factually wrong. It seems to be an innate human tendency and it’s been weaponised.

I admitted my mistake.

I still think it's childish to lay ALL the blame for the uptake on testing on the government though.

I’m not having a go at you, just noticing that your post is accumulating likes despite the downstream clarification.  

> I still think it's childish to lay ALL the blame for the uptake on testing on the government though.

Depends on why the uptake is too low?  That I don’t know although you’d imagine functional trace and test could fill that trivially...

R4's More or Less has looked at the stats behind the claims of how many tests are being done https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08ccb4g (6th May episode)

I did not catch all the programme but it seems like there is a lot of double counting and mis-direction, worth a listen to the one above or others that are later, they were talking about it again on the latest one.

A colleague of my wife booked one of the UK government's tests.

Before she had even gone for the test she got an e-mail telling her she was negative.

That is efficiency.

It's not like you take take exception to the UK government Tom! I had had a test and I was alerted via text message of the result so I'm not so sure your email story holds much water tbh.

 (Incidentally for Track and Trace to work as effectively as it did in S Korea and Australia it is suggested that we actually need 495,000 tests a day - not testing capacity, actual tests.)

Maybe, but Germany has the virus reasonably well under control and tests approximately 60,000 a day

All the NHS Trusts in my area are offering staff blood tests for antibodies and swabs for active illness. (as of 2 days ago) 

Possibly because they're trying not to overload the system, thinking that it should be reserved for a systematic testing of front line care workers?

Not realising that there's no such systematic testing going on...

And if there's spare capacity, the government should be planning how to use it, rather than just sitting playing with their dicks. With any critical, finite resource, you need to figure out a system to use it optimally.

They could, for instance, send invites, or test kits out to people.

But then, I'm still waiting to get my letter from Johnson telling me about this new virus...

My area are about to roll out antibody testing and covid tests have been available for some time. But don't confuse voluntary ad hoc testing with no track and trace element with the systematic, regular testing of staff combined with robust track and trace. One approach is a useful tool in controlling the spread of infection and one just about breeches the standard of "Nice To Know".

Because unless things have changed you can only have a test if you suspect you have symptoms; we tried to get our staff to get tested (fuel forecourt and convenience stores); they had to be "proposed" or put forward by the employer. first queston - are they symptomatic? Answer - No. Sorry cant have a test. It would be very usefl for both them as individuals and us as a company to know if anyone was / is positive.

Don't be daft, what possible benefit could their be to testing someone in a public facing job who isn't showing symptoms. 

It's not as though there is such a thing as asymptomatic people........ 

Yes this is the simple fact, known for sure for at least the last month, that the government seems unable to grasp. 

So are the government receiving scientific advice that they are then choosing to ignore?

And if so what could be the reason for it?

In the words of Lucy when talking about Charlie Brown, Have you ruled out stupidity?

Asymtomatic transmission has been known since February when it was covered in the media and multiple detailed studies were published in the medical literature.  A lot of people seem unable to grasp it and it’s almost certainly a key part of why this thing spreads like wildefire.

It seemed to be too easy of an an option.

From worldometer the current state of play on numbers as at this morning  is:

3,952,971 German tests

4,285,738 UK tests ( having been at vitually nothing)

France 1,384,633

Let us not kid ourselves,it is a pity that they did not have this capacity at the start and a system in place which used both public and private facilities..But they now have ramped up the numbers.It is better we are in this postion than not. Glass half full.

No such test.

Tests are the responsibility of the different governments so outside England responsibility is with NI, Wales or Scotland.

Scotland has about the lowest rate of testing in the world. 

Again, capacity for 15000 but actual tests around 4000 per day. Absolutely dreadful that we can't organise people to get tested while C19 is killing our parents in care homes.

When does a glass half full turn into wishful thinking? I'm working at the moment but I will look into those figures later.

I'm not a neg for the sake of it, btw, I'm naturally an optimist, but I think we are in a classic case - a bit like the first world war - where the generals have no frigging idea what to do, and all their reactions and plans are based on false premises and are just plain wrong. Because lots of people literally are dying we think there is some progress being made.

Well we're about to find out empirically; it appears from the weekend we've just had that the lockdown has all but ended; fuel sales only 25% down on what we would normally expect from a hot weekend in may rather than 50% as it has been recently, shop sales, especially alcohol, through the roof. Social distancing at an end. While our stores have been busier than normal throughout the lockdown, customers have been almost without exception fully compliant with, accepting of, and even welcoming of the measures we had taken to limit exposure (limits on numbers in store, markings on floor, sanitiser stations etc etc), but this all changed suddenly on thurs / fri. More than once, cashiers / store staff, when trying to get people to adhere to the guidelines have been told "dont be daft, the lockdowns over". We can still protect the staff whilst at work, but as far as the customers are concerned, its back to "normal". 

And as for the truck drivers at the bunkering site we have adjacent to the A1, its as  if it never happened..........and these guys are travelling all over the country every day.

I have no idea if those figures are right or wrong by the way, but it is interesting and I am sure we would prefer to be this side of the numbers.

Having listened on R4  to one of the Profs who headed up the night shift at one of these testing centres, I did find it interesting that he suggested  this capacity should be used to focus on hot spots and not on just offering it to all and sundry.He indicated it was almost being wasted.Also he expected us to be ahead of every country in terms of capacity as more and more testing is brought into play.

I do not like war analogies.This is a public health/science issue with a new disease.

The genie is out of the bottle and won't be put back. And Trace and Test isn't going to work either. Look at the governments website - does it make any sense to you? 'Hello, we think you may have been in contact with someone with CV. No, we can't tell you who, and we can't tell you when. Could you please take the next two weeks off work, for which by the way you won't get paid. You won't? Oh well.'

So we really, really need to STOP 'following the science' (not that we ever did) and focus on policies that can actually be made to work to reduce the carnage. Supervision and support of at risk individuals; support for care homes; practical help with shielding, quarantine and self isolation.  

At the moment the WWI analogy seems particularly apposite to me.  We're continuing with policies that haven't worked because these are new circumstances, yet we are not changing the paradigm.

Update.

3229 tests carried out on Saturday, capacity in Scotland is 15000 so under 25% of capacity is being used. 

Shocking.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18487149.scottish-covid-testing-falls-l...

Well there is plenty of other recent historical revision that this concept of Lions being led by Donkeys may be wrong........which is why I am wary of war time analogies.

Is it possible that the actual demand for tests is just not there.... only an idea.

It’s the governments job to generate that demand by identifying the people most beneficial to test and joining the dots between them and the testing capability.  There is no such shortage of people...  

It eventually becomes too hard to ignore a stark reality.

The demand is there. I refer you to my post upthread - we want all of our staff (82 people) tested as regularly as possible; we have been told no you can't unless they are symptomatic. These are all retail workers dealing with the public. There are fairly serious implications for these people getting infected without knowing until they do become symptomatic.

Fair point, Had not read that. So are you going to get them done privately as a business?

Interestingly mate of mine runs a care home/ community care business. His level of absentism has reduced since the testing has become more available to individuals.It reduced anxiety etc amongst his employees quite considerably who were displaying symptomatic signs and had phoned in sick.

The only thing that the daily briefings confirm is that they are exercises in smoke and mirrors. There is a woeful absence of explicit, clear and corroborated information that is accessible to the general public. On the contrary, they are patronising, disingenuous and confused.

youtube.com/watch?v=bQDPQ8bz7cU&

Which is what that prof at the testing centre said,, go for the hot spots, do not offer it to all and sundry.

No.

We're still not routinely testing medical and care home staff, except if they have symptoms.

Why can't we run a million tests a day? What's actually stopping us? Are we serious about stamping out this virus or are we just going to tolerate a steady but manageable stream of deaths until a virus turns up or we acquire herd immunity?

I'd really like a politician to give us some full and honest answers.

Certainly looking at it; we are getting temperature readers asap, which are of some limited use but in these terms are low cost, low hanging fruit that certainly can't do any harm, and can be used as often as people want. but the issue for us is not just getting a snapshot at a point in time; we want to be able to test everyone regularly.

Agree peace of mind is massively important; we don't want our staff to be distracted by worries about being covid positive, nor do we want them to think they have to take time off to protect others at work if they happen to have the slightest cough or sniffle. Clearly these worries will be amplified many times in a care home given the nature of the residents.

He's a prof and I'm not, but why not test as many as possible as often as possible, to see how transmission and hot spots develop, before they get to be real hotspots?

If our capacity is now 200k / day, and we are only performing 115k (or whatever it was), then thats 2.5 million tests per month we are not doing that we could be doing.

He was suggesting that widespread testing was not the recognised norm in pandemics and just a waste of resources. I suspect like all these things there is a counter scientific view somewhere.

Fair enough. We just want our employees to know that they are ok now, and also that they will be able to find out with minimum fuss whether they are still ok in (say) 2 weeks time, and also 2 weeks after that. etc.

Known since January when the Singaporean authorities published a case study clearly demonstrating asymptomatic (we'll, pre-symptomatic in that case) transmission. 

Jk

As a poster told me yesterday “I think your memory is faulty”.  Despite a link to an actual published study of asymptomatic transmission from February some posters are still actively denying that this was knowledge back then and calling “hindsight” at anyone who mentions it.  I’ve been flabbergasted to see this actually happen and also at how many people are drawn to apologist dismissal of reality. 

I agree with Dave Garnett - the government really don’t seem to get it.  Or, if they do; they don’t seem to care...