600 million LFT not accounted for

[Baileysforchristmas]

Because no one wants to use them, what a waste of money.

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/25/almost-600m-nhs-home-covid-tests-unaccounted-for-auditors-reveal

We use them but we don’t register the results, it takes too long to input all the info

We always use them but have a backlog of 7 boxes to get through.
I picked up some and both dcs came home with a box each.

Yep, I did my first home test the other day and gave up trying to log it. I naively thought I could log it easily on the app.

Work in a school. Test and register (with both school and govt websites) whether negative or positive. It's a faff, and the numbers are tiny, but it didn't occur to me not to, or that others who were asked to test and register weren't.

I'm one of those people that started logging the negative tests for 4 of us then decided to only log if we had a positive. Still doing them weekly though.

I use them but I don't register the result.

I was going to, and tried the first time. But they want too much personal information. I don't see why it's necessary, especially for a negative result. It feels intrusive to me.

So now we know why the positive rate is so high

People not registering negatives. Great. Thanks for that. 😱

I'm not in uk
lft are considered informal and are not officially counted, they are a screening tool only.
only pcr are counted.

Most of them are probably in our living room. The DC are given them faster than we can test.

We have to log test results with the school as well as the NHS system, and like others on here, I've stopped doing it every time, because it's such a soul destroying exercise.

It takes barely 2 minutes to register the result and means there is a record of how many have been done.
If you’ve used a test but haven’t logged the result these will be considered “unaccounted for”.

People bleat on about restrictions being lifted but then refuse to participate in the LFD testing, which in my opinion is one of the key measures that allows us to maintain some normality.

@Ostara212

So now we know why the positive rate is so high

People not registering negatives. Great. Thanks for that. 😱

You can say that about any aspect of this though. Some countries aren't reporting their prevalence of Delta variant because they don't do genomic sequencing, for example.

Just as some countries recorded deaths from covid, and some deaths with covid, and others deathdeaths within 28days of having covid...
Statistics can always be manipulated.

Our school weren't giving them out so i had to make the hour round trip to collect them, so i did collect as many as i could in one go in a few trips!!!
We are slowly working our way through them!
However, I don't register the negative tests.

I was given some when someone was booked to do some work at my house. In the end they cancelled so I didn’t need to take them but have used the odd one or two when feeling a bit poorly just in case.

DP (don’t live together) tested positive a few weeks ago using his kids’ ones from school. Don’t think he registered it anywhere? He’s then been using them after the 10 day quarantine period to test whether he’s now negative and can see people again. Was still showing positive after 12 days but don’t know how accurate they are anyway. Don’t suppose he’s logging the negatives either.

@Ostara212

So now we know why the positive rate is so high

People not registering negatives. Great. Thanks for that. 😱

Surely its the PCRs counted not the LFTS? Lateral flows are a bit of a gateway to the PCRs to confirm?

The stats are per population not per tested.

That’s really not the reason. And like I’ve said upthread, LFTs are really not suitable for using in that sort of data.

While they have been given emergency approval by theMHRA they don’t meet the MHRAs criteria for testing.

As I said we’ve already hit the criteria for high levels of Covid and it’s still rising at an ‘interesting rate’ more people logging negative LFTs isn’t going to change that number. At a push it might tell us whether the number is actually much higher than that and we’re in a worse position than we are currently pretending we are not in.

I do them twice a week for work and have to record all of them. Luckly they are all negative, the results have to be emailed to the care home.

Also have to do pcr tests every week too.

I've got a box of them but I only use them if I feel a bit off colour, and then I remember that I'm meant to do a PCR test in that situation, so end up doing that too, and not bothering to register the LFT. There's been such a lot of press about how they don't work that it hardly seems that useful to take the time tbh.

I stopped logging negative results too. I'll let school know, and that's it. It's too much faff. I did notify NHS in the beginning though, but haven't for at least a month.

DP (don’t live together) tested positive a few weeks ago using his kids’ ones from school. Don’t think he registered it anywhere? He’s then been using them after the 10 day quarantine period to test whether he’s now negative and can see people again. Was still showing positive after 12 days but don’t know how accurate they are anyway. Don’t suppose he’s logging the negatives either.

He should have had a PCR test (which would have been logged) to confirm the positive lateral flow test.

You're also recommended not to continue to use LFDs within 90 days of a positive test as they may continue to show a positive result ,so his plan to see if he's now negative is not going to work ...

I've been testing twice a week as they asked us to. Sometimes I remember to log the results but sometimes I completely forget. I would definitely log a positive result though and go for a PCR test if the lft was positive

@Ostara212

So now we know why the positive rate is so high

People not registering negatives. Great. Thanks for that. 😱

This doesn’t make sense: positive results are per 100000 of population. Recording negatives would give access to data about %positive OF THOSE TESTING (not withstanding the LFT being the gateway to ‘proper’ Oct tests) but the useful data that affects lockdowns etc is about how many positive cases. Eg: If there’s 250 cases* swamping my local hospital and triggering lockdowns, it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference if you can say ‘but there’s 1,009,009 negatives in the area too…’ (*disclaimer: all figures etc pulled out of my arse)

(Proper PCR tests)

Hands up as another who doesn’t log negative results (which is all we’ve had so far).

I do one three times a week (two to cover the school week as dd is only 5) and one for a volunteer role I fulfil. DP does two and did an extra for a test event he attended. We’ve PCR tested dd once since we’ve started doing them for symptoms and would do the same if we developed symptoms or a positive LFT.