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 The tests are not accurate, they are disruptive and difficult to administer, the results are out of date as soon as they are received and they are costing billions.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?

@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 The tests are not accurate, they are disruptive and difficult to administer, the results are out of date as soon as they are received and they are costing billions.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?

To make it look like they're doing something??

Seriously there is going to be a point when the most vulnerable are vaccinated that the testing centres are going to close and the only time we may be tested is if we go in to hospital, similar to mrsa and gba

So the plan for schools is to test them all before they return. Then what, surely they have a weekend at home, back to school Monday, are they still clear? I mean surely these tests need to be repeated regularly, for all students/staff, to pick up cases with no symptoms?
Sounds like this is a one off that’s doomed to fail.
I understand schools can’t continuously test everyone, just pointing out how inaccurate it’s going to be given it’s only being done once.

Testing is quite important in planning resources and working out timelines. It’s got a bit better but hardly a really effective system yet. It does, however show where rates are growing, how quickly they are growing and when hospitals need to increase bed capacity and staffing.

Mint Julia, and the child who tested positive, how did he get to school? Did he pass anyone on the way? Chat with friends (pass on the virus), chat in the queue?
Where did he wait for the result to become known? Classrooms chatting to his just tested negative friends?

How many people will he affect with this new strain whilst on his way to school, in school and waiting for the results?.
How many of his freshly tested negative school mates will have a false sense of security, demand windows are shut, not wear masks properly because every in school must be negative?

Can you see the flaws!
Then the potential of massive viral loads on staff who have to over see the test?

@MrJinxyCat - it isn’t a one-off in schools. They appear to be planning to get anyone who has been a contact with a confirmed positive case to get a lateral flow test every (presumably school) day for 7(?) days to see whether they test positive or not. If they test positive, they then have to get a PCR test to confirm. The intention is to keep children in school instead of sending them home to isolate when they have had close contact with people with covid 19.

I think there is also a question of what we mean by asymptomatic. Is anyone without the 3 listed nhs symptoms considered asymptomatic? In other countries there are a much wider range of symptoms considered. If you look on the covid boards on here and on the zoe app very few present with these 3 symptoms. Headache and fatigue are much more common.

I could easily be spreading it as I am sneezing and have a runny nose. Without a test I would have thought it was a cold. I have not at any point had a temperature, loss of taste or smell or cough.

My eldest DC school has sent a letter regarding the return to school and testing. School have said that children who have been in close contact with a positive case will no longer need to isolate and should continue attending school as normal. Pupils will now only need to isolate if they test positive. School has also said that the tests are not mandatory and children/parents can refuse the test if they wish. Where I feel the letter has been vague is it hasn’t mentioned how often the testing will take place, or mentioned what should happen in the case of a close contact but a test is refused by the parent/child....will that child be made to isolate, or just expected to isolate, will anything be done if they don’t isolate etc.

I would have liked to know and understand that if my child had been in close contact with a confirmed case, will be parents be notified that their child has been in close contact, and how long it would be before they received a test, but perhaps the schools don’t know this yet, or don’t have enough accurate, reliable information yet to be able to pass this information on to parents.

We will have to just see how affective this new testing strategy ends up being. Hopefully it means more cases are identified sooner and those who will need isolate can and do, and that there is much less disruption to education as precautionary isolation is no longer required. I do wonder how much extra spread/exposure may come from no longer needing to isolate and the time lapsed before being confirmed positive, especially since this new strain is supposed to be so much more transmissible. I just worry that it will still spread rampantly, the only difference being that we will have lots more actual confirmed cases due to the testing.

I suppose we will see what happens soon enough.

@Lillygolightly

My eldest DC school has sent a letter regarding the return to school and testing. School have said that children who have been in close contact with a positive case will no longer need to isolate and should continue attending school as normal. Pupils will now only need to isolate if they test positive. School has also said that the tests are not mandatory and children/parents can refuse the test if they wish. Where I feel the letter has been vague is it hasn’t mentioned how often the testing will take place, or mentioned what should happen in the case of a close contact but a test is refused by the parent/child....will that child be made to isolate, or just expected to isolate, will anything be done if they don’t isolate etc.

I would have liked to know and understand that if my child had been in close contact with a confirmed case, will be parents be notified that their child has been in close contact, and how long it would be before they received a test, but perhaps the schools don’t know this yet, or don’t have enough accurate, reliable information yet to be able to pass this information on to parents.

We will have to just see how affective this new testing strategy ends up being. Hopefully it means more cases are identified sooner and those who will need isolate can and do, and that there is much less disruption to education as precautionary isolation is no longer required. I do wonder how much extra spread/exposure may come from no longer needing to isolate and the time lapsed before being confirmed positive, especially since this new strain is supposed to be so much more transmissible. I just worry that it will still spread rampantly, the only difference being that we will have lots more actual confirmed cases due to the testing.

I suppose we will see what happens soon enough.

Email the head teacher and ask these questions.

Didn't they find though that the lateral flow tests only picked up half the positive cases in one university? Oh here it is,
www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4848

Mass vaccination would be a much better use of resources than mass testing.

It’s very worrying that they’re using the rapid tests instead of self-isolating, given that they miss half of cases and those children will be in school spreading covid.

It would make more sense to get close contacts to self isolate and then test the rest of the school year to pick up other symptomatic cases.

@starrynight19 I already have

@WouldBeGood

Mass vaccination would be a much better use of resources than mass testing.

Yup, ideally, but we are in a far from ideal situation right now.

Ultimately prevention is better than cure (which we don’t have) and knowing where the virus actually is means we have a chance to stop those chains of transmission. We will absolutely miss some cases but the aim isn’t to eradicate it completely but to contain it. We’re aiming for lower numbers not nil.

@JellyBabiesSaveLives

It’s very worrying that they’re using the rapid tests instead of self-isolating, given that they miss half of cases and those children will be in school spreading covid.

It would make more sense to get close contacts to self isolate and then test the rest of the school year to pick up other symptomatic cases.

@JellyBabiesSaveLives

It would make more sense to get close contacts to self isolate and then test the rest of the school year to pick up other symptomatic cases

But symptomatic cases should already be isolating/PCR testing. Do you mean asymptomatic cases?

I have no idea what happened there!

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!

What it also means is that parents will send their clearly symptomatic children to school as responsibility for testing has shifted to schools. Child sits on bus and mixes with friends before testing. Tests negative on days 1, 2 and 3 by which point the whole class has it not to mention 4 teachers. Class not sent home, it rather is tested and only 3 test positive so,are removed. 27 kids who were in an enclosed space with an active case for 3 days still in school, mixing on the way home, mixing with parents and grandparents. Of those 27, over 7 days, 10of them test positive, the last 2 on day 7....

Mass testing would have been a lot more useful in May.

@isthatitnow bloody hell you're right, i had never even considered someone would be stupid enough to do that

@Doyoumind

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?

this

@Doyoumind

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?

But mass testing can only test if someone has the virus at the point of testing. Just minutes later the test result is valueless even if accurate (and accuracy is questionable). For example test a child on a Monday morning and get a negative result but by morning break they have picked up the virus. Test a student before they return to University and they pick up the virus whilst returning on the train.

The virus is highly prevalent in the whole community. No virus has ever been eradicated by attempting to isolate asymptomatic carriers or even by isolating those with symptoms. We don't know if asymptomatic carriers of a virus can spread it because until now there was little research or data about asymptomatic virus transmission. The tests used to identify asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus were designed to test people with symptoms hense the inaccuracy.

It's a lot of money to throw at something when it can't do what it's meant to do.

I don't really think you can be that stupid OP. You are more likely goady. If you test people and find some who are positive, but wouldn't have known otherwise, and take them out of circulation, then you are limiting transmission. It's that simple. Don't pretend it isn't. No, it doesn't guarantee they won't pick it up elsewhere but it reduces the overall risk.

I think there is a good point about whether close contact tracing is worthwhile. I just posted basically this on another thread.

T&T is only really effective if the virus is at low levels in society such that people who have had close contact with a covid case are significantly more likely to have covid than people who haven't.

There was a study from Singapore published in the Lancet where of 7700 close contacts identified (using a similar classification to ours) 188 of those contacts tested positive, a rate of 2.4%. That included household contacts for whom the positivity rate was much higher. The positivity rate for non-household contacts was around 1.3%.

The last estimate I saw for prevalence in the UK was 1 in 65 which is 1.5%. It's probably higher now.

So at the moment you are probably no more likely to have covid if you have been identified as a close contact by T&T than if you haven't. Clearly, individual risk varies depending on where you live and what you have been doing.

Some other countries have given up on close contact tracing now.

On that basis I don't think testing so that we can isolate close contacts is really worthwhile at the moment. I do think it's useful to test to know how prevalent the virus is in different areas and to isolate positive cases, even if asymptomatic.

However, we don't always seem to be using the data intelligently e.g. we still don't seem to know exactly where the virus is spreading or who by. E.g. is surface transmission really an issue, is there actually lower spread in environments where you wear masks, are a small number of super-spreaders responsible for a majority of cases? etc.

And once we know that someone has had covid, we could use that information. E.g. it makes sense for healthcare workers who have had covid to treat vulnerable people if possible because they are likely to have at least some immunity.

Interesting @Chessie678. when dp was isolated by the app over Christmas once we’d calmed down over the initial anxiety we realised that the app had simply picked up and notified us of a risk that is always present. We deduced it had to either be from a school pick up or shop visit as no one we know has identified themselves as positive. He never developed symptoms.

I don’t think T&T or the app are particularly useful in areas when it takes a long time to get results and needs to be much faster. Anecdotally I’ve had a few friends and read on here of people being isolated by the app for as little as two days.