The great South west PCR mystery

[3asAbird]

They say they investigating when we going to find out outcome?

inews.co.uk/news/covid-lateral-flow-tests-negative-pcr-1236141

Is it option

1. faulty batch pcr tests only at South west drive through test centres? 2/ corruption or negligence at the local lab? Does the South west have 1 giant lab that processes bath/ Swindon and Bristol pcr tests
2. some new varient that evades pcr tests like the one in France.

Are we even doing much genome sequencing these days?

We did have surge testing in Bristol last winter with varient e48k similar South Africa but that was pre delta.

We had massive cases in locally June and July.
Local r rate seems low currently despite so many off school and 2 Universitys return.

3 kids my child's year have postive lft but negative pcr.
We don't have any set date for covid jabs.
The school is not declaring any cases at all publicly..

Weirdly people saying home tests giving postive results.

That lft more likely to bring us false negative than postive..

Just makes me worried so much covid all over the region undetected with postives not isolating.

So many if these postive lft negative pcr seem to be school children.
ONS forecast 1 in 14 teens had covid last week yet all teens at our school with covid symptoms have negative pcr?

And why would you retest if they don't change the isolation period!

Yeah it's bonkers. Since the very start I've only known one person who has had it.
Until this week, and now that total has shot up to over 10, and I've got it myself!!
I'm convinced that half the kids at DC school have it.

@Louiselady500

I feel very angry that there were no interim precautions put in place while they were investigating. Instead the virus has been allowed to rapidly spread through communities. Let’s hope the hospitalisations remain manageable.

Yes they could have easily said look be extra cautious in these areas. They forget the numbers are people.

Yes, if you had a negative pcr on thr 4th but isolated anyway with symptoms and now restest you'll end up doing another 10 days isolating for no reason. Stupid.
Probably only worth getting a restest if you are still 5 days or less from positive LF or symptoms. Otherwise better to just isolate and maybe call GP and see of they will note covid on your record using the LF as proof.

@louiselady500 especially as the twitter covid data crowd have been flagging that something was weird in the SW stats for more than a month now. If they could see it, why didn't the govt? How did no one notice that case numbers were suddenly plummeting in one region after being in a gradual rise, and randomly shooting up a few days later?!?

@Tinysnickers has it been going on more than a month?! Does this mean the southwest figures are all unreliable now and we just have to ignore those months. I know I'm just supposed to trust the experts but I really want to know details of this if I'm going to trust the testing again. I want to know what exactly was the problem and how it's been resolved.

@goldchick on this graph it looks like the first day of real weirdness in the figures was around 6/7 September, coinciding with kids going back to school. Not sure if that's linked or just coincidence.

[quote Tinysnickers]@louiselady500 especially as the twitter covid data crowd have been flagging that something was weird in the SW stats for more than a month now. If they could see it, why didn't the govt? How did no one notice that case numbers were suddenly plummeting in one region after being in a gradual rise, and randomly shooting up a few days later?!?[/quote]
Remember this is a government who sees tens of thousands of cases per day and still has not reversed their lack of mask mandate or some form of restrictions. The Tory donors have effectively blindfolded this government when it comes to Covid statistics. No doubt when they saw the data they presumed it was simply a miracle at work.

They are desperate to move on from Covid to regain lost economic ground, but as we can clearly see Covid is going nowhere especially with autumn now here.

I knew of positive school staff and children, getting +LTF and -PCR back in September. This has been going on for a lot longer than they are admitting.

Which is funny really. Good old anecdotal data of people actually living this situation, paints a clear picture of raw data which is now proven false.

Just seen this on twitter. 43k people given the wrong result, holy crap. And how many people did they spread it to?!?!

If it was going to happen in any country, of course it would be England! Next question, was this an admin error, machinery fault or an act of sabotage.

How can a mistake be made 43k times...!?

[quote Tinysnickers]@goldchick on this graph it looks like the first day of real weirdness in the figures was around 6/7 September, coinciding with kids going back to school. Not sure if that's linked or just coincidence.[/quote]
How has no one looked at that and gone hang on..we need to do something here.

I've been following this and was reminded of another Twitter thread about the accuracy of flow tests.
Esssentially saying they are more accurate than PCRs at the point when you are most infectious.

twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1441421669306978307

@AbstractDot

If it was going to happen in any country, of course it would be England! Next question, was this an admin error, machinery fault or an act of sabotage.

How can a mistake be made 43k times...!?

It does make you wonder. It also makes you wonder how accurate the other labs are and whether 45k daily cases yesterday was a true representation of the infections we now have.

I think another week or two and we could start hearing talk of actions to be considered and taken to keep rates down otherwise they’ll have no choice but to lockdown this winter.

I reckon admin error. They messed up that excel spreadsheet last year.

The work experience kid pressing the negative button instead of the positive button when sending the emails out.

@Tinysnickers

The work experience kid pressing the negative button instead of the positive button when sending the emails out.

Yeah or inserting a line somewhere that's shifted all the results down by one or something

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/15/public-urged-to-retake-covid-tests-after-false-negatives-in-berkshire?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Absolutely scandalous that as soon as it became clear there was an issue- over a week ago?- they didn’t just tell people to go with the lft result while they investigated

Something off is definitely going on. I thought I'd better collect some new lat flow tests as we've only a couple of boxes left and the kids have to test twice a week.

So we all took lat flows yesterday as we have been informed that we have been in contact with positive cases . 3 out of 4 positive. The negative had been taken out of one of the new boxes. Slightly different test. Because of all the weirdness, I suggested we take them again, and the 3 of us who had positive took the newer test and the one who has negative took one out of the boxes we already had. They were positive and the three of us were negative. Booked PCRs, but this morning, we all retook the lateral flow and used droplets from the same sample on an older and new test each. Older tests positive for all of us. New test one very faint barely there positive- the rest negative

This is a huge mess.
But imagine if we didn’t have LFTs. This is a monumental cock up but I’m sure a lot of people/most suspected they had covid thanks to the lft and did the right thing. If the only test they did was negative they wouldn’t have suspected otherwise.

We are in SW - and I am alarmed at the avalanche of cases here that are totally unreported. Every other person is testing negative despite testing positive several times of LFT, and having very obvious Covid symptoms. Not cold symptoms but classic Covid. PCR negative children are being sent back into school to reinfect all the other children.
We now have a big outbreak which is not reported, and I have no idea what is going on with the PCR tests.
Our whole family had Covid last week, all the same symptoms. Really quite ill, two tested positive for PCR - two tested negative. One then turned positive on the second week on the third PCR.
If this is happening country wide then the infection figure would look more like 100,000 cases a day…as many are simply not bothering to get PCRs now as they are unreliable.
Yes we might be heading to herd immunity by the back door. Maybe gov have decided vaccines for teens is a waste of money, another six weeks of this and everyone will have natural antibodies!

Hmmm

@Frazzled2207

This is a huge mess. But imagine if we didn’t have LFTs. This is a monumental cock up but I’m sure a lot of people/most suspected they had covid thanks to the lft and did the right thing. If the only test they did was negative they wouldn’t have suspected otherwise.

I didn't do LFTs as my PCR was negative. The GP even queried it and asked me to do another one.

@Frazzled2207

Hmmm

🙈 you couldn't make it up!

The infection rate in the UK is nothing like the reality on the ground. Everyone I know is catching covid, we are going down like flies and yet the infection rate figure hardly moves! It is the same steady number more or less every week, which I also find very hard to believe.