Will you continue with school testing at home?

[Orangeblossom1975]

Just wondered what others think about this. They have had the 3 tests at school and now taking the tests home.

I'm a bit concerned about false negatives. Wondering whether to continue with it or not. You have to upload the results to a website I understand.

@HedgeSparrows

Yes. To protect the teachers, other children in the class and the wider community.

I wish people would think of others before themselves.

This ^

I’d rather mine be isolating and working from home even if in error than people be out spreading it to staff and others.

I’d rather mine be isolating and working from home even if in error

Lucky to be able to afford that. If you are self employed not so easy

If no tests, then surely the chance of dc ending up isolating due to positive cases in their classes will be greater.

It’s been mentioned already but I saw this shared earlier and thought it was useful.

This difference in approach between school and home positive results makes no sense. I'm sure I read the limitations of the LFT are due to the test itself, rather than user error.
It's academic now I suppose as my son has had the last of his school tests so it'll be all home tests from now on anyway

@SingANewSongChickenTikka

It’s been mentioned already but I saw this shared earlier and thought it was useful.

Why are schools not giving this info to parents I wonder, would be helpful.

@Volcanoexplorer

Dh and I are both teachers and doing twice weekly lateral flow tests to try and keep other's safe. Please do the same for the staff at your children’s school.

This. It's a community effort.

I thought the kids had been doing the tests themselves in school so I could not understand why there was a difference in needing a pcr test after a positive lft depending on whether the kid did the test at home or school.

But DS told me all the kids have done in school is the swab- he had no clue how to set it all up, put the liquid in the tube, read the result etc as this is what the testing staff (experts did).

So now I understand!

@Volcanoexplorer

Dh and I are both teachers and doing twice weekly lateral flow tests to try and keep other's safe. Please do the same for the staff at your children’s school.

And yet supermarket staff do no testing and see far more people in a day without all of this. Madness

Without all this? No, just with distancing, masks, hand sanitiser, screens, reduced numbers.
Would testing the customers of Tesco be an idea that would catch on? Not remotely the same is it?

Yes, we started yesterday. It was negative.

We'll do two a week ( Mondays and Thursdays). The site for registering the results is pretty easy.

As someone said above please help protect your children's teachers and others families. It's very simple and the website takes a minute.

I'll be encouraging my teenagers to do theirs but am not sure I'll be able to do mine and am actually quite worried about it. I think it's an ASD thing - in the same way as some people can't wear masks, I can't swallow tablets, put in or take out contact lenses, I cried all the way through a filling years ago (very embarrassing) and left a blood doning session without giving blood and not been back since. I had a PCR test last summer which I found so difficult, even though someone else was testing me that time. Atm I think I'd rather live in isolation forever than do a lateral flow test (which I know sounds ridiculous). 😔

Absolutely we will. I’m doing my kids tomorrow. It makes no sense not to.

Yes, Ds2 is severely autistic and can't do the tests so dh and I have been doing them fairly diligently.

I’m surprised that children in some schools are having so much help. Ours are doing it themselves. The only bit that is already done for them is putting the solution in the vial otherwise the children do everything else themselves - putting the swab in, squeezing it, dropping the sample on the test etc. It was tricky the first time, but I’m pleased because they’ll know exactly how to do it at home.

Yes we'll be doing it, I'll have 2 dc and DH doing them too as he works out the house
going into other peoples houses. That's 3 out 5 of our household testing twice a week

@FlyingBurrito

Does anyone know the reasoning for this? Seems ridiculous when it's the same test

It's because there's no control or oversight on how home tests are done and there could be issues that cause a false positive so it needs to be confirmed. It's not ridiculous at all, the test may be the same but every home environment is different and uncontrolled

It is ridiculous.Have you seen the tests? They're like testing for dummies101.

So because a teacher has been "trained" how to put a swab in a vial,move it round a few times,put a lid on and drop the liquid onto test twice,that's controlled environment. But a parent doing EXACTLY the same procedure at home,it isn't?

So what is it,they either don't trust parents and the staff processing the tests are more skilled at putting dropelets onto a test or the school is a controlled environment akin to a laboratory (LMAO!)

If that's not ridiculous,I'd love to know what is!

Yes, of course, it's the least we can do to keep the schools open.

@SakuraEdenSwan1 I think all people in jobs where they have a lot of contact with others should be given lateral flow tests to do at home should they want to. I’m lucky to have been given this opportunity.

I don’t understand why false negatives would put you off doing them. We know they are far from perfect but they pick up some cases that otherwise would be missed. Doing them could save lives. I wish people would think about the bigger picture.

And yet supermarket staff do no testing and see far more people in a day without all of this

Supermarket staff can wear PPE, are usually behind a screen and serve people for a few minutes. Simply doesn’t compare to a classroom all day.

There's a bit of a mix up between specificity and sensitivity and how many people are thinking about the LFTs.

The LFTs have a high specificity but not a great sensitivity. That means that false negatives will happen more often (some studies suggesting LFTs will only pick up to 50% of cases, some studies suggest less). However, the high specificity means that when they say you are positive, you are most likely positive. The rate of false positives is around a tenth of a percent. The only reason we are finding some is because schools are testing so many thousands of students.

DD didn't want to do the test at school so I picked up some for her to do at home. I've plenty left so we'll just keep on doing them.

Of course