What is the point of all this testing?

[Billie18]

Serious question. What is the point of mass testing people with no symptoms? The tests are not accurate, they are disruptive and difficult to administer, the results are out of date as soon as they are received and they are costing billions. Billions that could be spent more directly on treating ill people. Also what research indicates that people without symptoms can spread a virus?

The tests are accurate, yabu.

They are testing to see how many people are asymptomatic and also trying to cut down people who may catch it from the asymptomatic carriers.

The more tests, the more lockdowns

Nor are they particularly difficult to administer. My DS has already done two himself. For some reason he's fine with sticking a swab stick up his nose

Probably something to do with being a twelve year old boy.

Have you been living under a rock for nine months?

The more tests, the more individuals with the virus can isolate at home and not spread it to their class mates avoiding generalised lockdowns or at least making them less likely.

So they have justification for slamming us all into tier 4.

More cases means more people with death "with covid", whether or not they actually died "from covid"

The tests justify the restrictions. Just ignore the bit about their inaccuracies, false positives and the fact that there is no evidence asymptomatic people spread.

I have covid. I didn't have any of the 3 nhs listed symptoms (justcold symptoms) and I caught it from my son who was asymptomatic. If I was not tested I would have not have realised I was positive and would have potentially have been spreading it to others so yes the tests are useful.

My brother is a dr. Due to using rapid tests, the hospital he works out found that 8 doctors who covered a particular specialism had asymptomatic covid. This was flagged by the rapid tests and confirmed by swab tests.

It's probably better that those drs were sent home to self isolate rather than passing Covid onto seriously ill patients.

@Mintjulia

The more tests, the more individuals with the virus can isolate at home and not spread it to their class mates avoiding generalised lockdowns or at least making them less likely.

The evidence so far is the opposite. Lockdowns/tier increases have gone along with increased testing.

@Mintjulia

Nor are they particularly difficult to administer. My DS has already done two himself. For some reason he's fine with sticking a swab stick up his nose

Probably something to do with being a twelve year old boy.

I was referring to the huge efforts required to set up regular testing in schools and other places. This is costing billions.

Well done your son for coping with doing a test himself. But how much do these tests cost? What use were the results. Positive or negative, accurate or not they were out of date as soon as your son got the results. If they were positive presumably that would mean isolation for your son and his contacts. Yet what evidence is there that asymptomatic can spread a virus. If the test was negative then your son may have picked up the virus minutes after the test was taken and would not be isolating. How often are people being tested? It can never be frequently enough to isolate people who are asymptomatic.

Billions spent on testing is billions not spent elsewhere. Questions should be asked.

@weepingwillow22

I have covid. I didn't have any of the 3 nhs listed symptoms (justcold symptoms) and I caught it from my son who was asymptomatic. If I was not tested I would have not have realised I was positive and would have potentially have been spreading it to others so yes the tests are useful.

You can't know that you caught it from your son.

@weepingwillow22

I have covid. I didn't have any of the 3 nhs listed symptoms (justcold symptoms) and I caught it from my son who was asymptomatic. If I was not tested I would have not have realised I was positive and would have potentially have been spreading it to others so yes the tests are useful.

How do you know you caught it from your son? Why did your son have a test if asymptomatic. Not being goady. Just curious what leads you to know this.

So you can see no benefit to identifying people with the virus and getting them to isolate rather than pass it on to the rest of their class and teachers who could in turn pass it on to their contacts? Do you really believe it is being spread by people with symptoms who go out regardless?

There is lots of research about asymptomatic people spreading this virus

Even if they "only" catch 20% of asymptomatic cases, that will still make a huge difference on a population level with exponential spread surely?! And I think it's more like 50% isnt it? Yes they're not perfect but to me that seems better than nothing!

@Chimeraforce 🙄 ffs

There is lots and lots of evidence that it can be spread asymptomatically. Many patients were contracting it in hospital from asymptomatic staff. In my hospital, on first day of lateral flow self testing, or physio team had 4 staff test positive( half the team) They weren't for full swans and were all confirmed positive. Since then 5 of my therapists have tested positive at home and gone on for full swabs which confirmed positive. So in last 6 weeks that is 9 therapists in a busy general hospital who would have continued to work with Covid19 unknown to anyone. In my limited experience, done properly, the swabs are extremely accurate although may miss some positives but surely the more Covid positive people you can remove from circulation the better??

So your solution is what? Don’t test anyone and let people carry on spreading it, potentially infecting the vulnerable?

@starrynight19 there isn't. There is a lot of research about presymptomatic people spreading the virus.

The new variant could be different though. I think (anecdotal evidence NYE zoom) that it certainly spreads much more easily.

My personal view is that we should test people with a greater range of symptoms before moving to asymptomatic screening.

The OP makes valid points though. You can disagree but it's certainly not a perspective that should be dismissed. There is a BMJ article about it that I will find.

@billie18 I know I caught it from my son as I have not been out of the house for 2 months and he was the only member of the household that had. My DH works from home and we have all our shopping delivered. He takes a taxi to school as he has special needs so I don't even do the school run. He tested positive and then my DH and I tested positive 1 week later. The only other possibility was that we caught it from the shopping but that seems unlikely.

Because if you get a positive lateral flow test then you isolate until confirmed by PCR. If it is a true positive then that is one less person spreading it. If it is negative on the PCR you no longer have to isolate after a few days.

DH was positive, I test twice weekly on lateral flow tests. The day before he tested positive my lateral flow was negative, 5 days later it was positive, luckily I was already isolating as my PCR was also positive. If I hadn't been isolating I could have been spreading the virus without knowing as I had no symptoms at that time.

DH is now in hospital due to Covid pneumonia, we have 3 young kids for whom he is the main carer, he is not over 65 or clinically vulnerable. The hospital had no beds, he had a 12 hour wait in A&E before getting to a ward and at one point there were 20 ambulances waiting outside A&E. He was one of 10 Covid patients waiting for a bed, one of them was in their 20's. In my local hospital they have admitted the equivalent of a ward and a half of Covid patients in the last few days and we are not an area with the highest rates. There were patients waiting for specialist cardiology beds but there were none because they had Covid patients in there.

This is why, every possible tool to reduce spread is helpful right now.

In my small team, lateral flows have picked up 3 people. 2 were pre-symptomatic, one remains asymptomatic. I know there's a query about whether truly asymptomatic people can transmit, but pre-symptomatic individuals definitely can. That's two clinicians who would have been treating patients for two or three days whilst shedding virus, were it not for lateral flow testing.

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage

Apologies @PlumsAreNotTheOnlyFruit lots of the research is still trying to determine how much asymptomatic people spread it as oppose to pre symptomatic but the BMJ is still saying that there isn’t any conclusive evidence to say asymptomatic people don’t spread it.
Also this research is for the old variant and not the new one.
Either way this shows that testing is still a crucial part of keeping this virus under some control.

Sorry to hear about your dh @Choconuttolata I hope he makes a full recovery.