Why have the number of virus tests taken each day suddenly shots up?

[Trumpety]

From the government dashboard, the number of virus tests conducted seem to have doubled in the last week (UK). What is driving this? Are they including the school kids taking LFT or something?

That is why many healthcare professional who knew what the consent actually meant, decided to do the home tests only and opt out of the school tests.
Under medical ethics, it should have been explained to everyone before they gave consent, but heyho...

@PicsInRed

Colds and viruses in schools and workplaces never stopped circulating. Those who remained home for work and school won't have had a good winter illness since late 2019 or early 2020 so they'll all be catching up on that now, thinking it's covid, and testing for symptoms.

I was one of these this week. I have had a fever (38.6), a cough, sore throat, very blocked and then streaming nose. In normal times it's a cold, in these times I had to troop off and get a covid test (it was negative) and as I am part of a vaccine trial I have to do 3 more tests over the next 3 days. So that will up the figures. I know a few people who seem to have the same bug (all covid negative) so it is obviously doing the rounds but we all have to have tests.

The test kit instructions say this:

You must report your results to the NHS.

Report your result so the NHS can monitor the spread of the virus, support communities across the UK, combat the virus and save lives. You can also find out more about the result and what you need to do.

How can this reporting be used to monitor... support... combat... save lives if these results are not included in the figures @houndedbytheherd ?

Unless you have a source that says different?

I would be surprised about the home LFTs being in the statistics - all NHS staff, many other public services and key workers, plus private business employees have been taking home LFTs for months without leading to an increase in case numbers as reported by the official statistics.
I guess that monitoring of case level and official statistics are not the same thing?
Certainly they should be asking for more people to confirm positive LFTs with PCRs simply to track variants (especially since the Brazilian variant has spread into the close contacts and family members of the carefully-quarantining initial cases in South Gloucestershire).

hmmm -the government dashboard says -

"For England, lateral flow device tests are available from 21 October 2020. This data contains LFD tests reported through the existing National Testing Programme digital infrastructure and doesn't include LFD tests conducted where the tests were not registered digitally. In future, all LFD tests will be reported via the existing National Testing Programme digital infrastructure and will be included."

This reads to me as if any LFT, home or school, that is reported online will be counted.

@Beaniecats

I think it's the lateral flows and then you take a normal test if the lateral flow shows a positive. So I think yes it is the schools Of course this means infections rise which allows the Government justification to impose restrictions permanently

Nope. Trump tried that line as well @Beaniecats, 'the reason that we have so many infections is because we have so many tests. If we stop testing our infection rate will go down'.

Not even Trump's most rabid supporters were stupid enough to fall for that line. He was the laughing stock of the whole world for a while, even amongst the conspiracy theorists...

@Beaniecats if all adults 18+ have had one vaccination by 1 September how will Whitty he able the argue that restrictions must be permanent?

He can't as hospitalisations would have fallen a lot.

[quote RedMarauder]@Beaniecats if all adults 18+ have had one vaccination by 1 September how will Whitty he able the argue that restrictions must be permanent?

He can't as hospitalisations would have fallen a lot.[/quote]
He will though

Lots of community asymptomatic testing too.

It does mean that you can't compare the number of infections so much, which is a bit annoying when tracking the data has become a daily hobby!

There's a massive programme rolling out for large employer testing too (factories, food plants).

I think only about 15% of PCR samples get sequenced, so rare variants won't be identified most of the time.

@houndedbytheherd

I would be surprised about the home LFTs being in the statistics - all NHS staff, many other public services and key workers, plus private business employees have been taking home LFTs for months without leading to an increase in case numbers as reported by the official statistics. I guess that monitoring of case level and official statistics are not the same thing? Certainly they should be asking for more people to confirm positive LFTs with PCRs simply to track variants (especially since the Brazilian variant has spread into the close contacts and family members of the carefully-quarantining initial cases in South Gloucestershire).

I'm NHS staff. Tests were rolled out in the autumn, when cases were already high, so the bump in figures from LFTs went relatively unnoticed. Plus they were rolled out over three or four weeks in our Trust, as boxes were delivered. I can confirm that, since day one, we have been reporting every test - there's a webpage on which to do so.

The school and workplace tests are bigger numbers, all starting basically at the same time, and on a background of relatively low cases. This means the impact of these tests is more noticable.

Thanks motorina.

Of course this means infections rise which allows the Government justification to impose restrictions permanently

I’m in no way a fan of the government, but love the way that people were moaning a few months ago that they couldn’t manage to get a test, and now that they have increased capacity that’s wrong too . But then, no point in missing an opportunity to peddle a conspiracy theory.

My town now has three drop-in sites. They are asking people who have to work outside the home to have regular tests so they can pick up any outbreaks at an early stage.

I'm testing twice a week now (since last week) within my workplace.

If testing numbers rise, and the number of positive does rise accordingly, that's got to be a good thing.

Scientists look st the positivity rate as an indication of how well or not we're doing - is how many positives per 1000 tests. So that eliminates the problem of more tests meaning more positives.

Sorry I meant doesn't rise.

University students are also testing twice a week, and lots of them on practical courses went back last weekend.

Testing millions of school kids. Which should have been done since September.

Just follow the Zoe data, it's very good and leads the ONS data by a few days:

covid.joinzoe.com/data

Yes it's LTF tests.

However I find it reassuring that with an increase of testing by 75% we still have a case drop of 5%.

@houndedbytheherd

That is why many healthcare professional who knew what the consent actually meant, decided to do the home tests only and opt out of the school tests. Under medical ethics, it should have been explained to everyone before they gave consent, but heyho...

I thought the PCR tests carried out at home were counted?

Or were they not because not done at a testing centre?

It doesn't make sense to count home pcr and not home LFT.

They are both counted.