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?

My daughter is incredibly ill. Strong repeated LTF, different kits the lot. No way it’s not COVID. Negative via SW drive through. Pcr by post tomorrow, that’s if she’s not in hospital before then. She’s going down hill rapidly and she’s primary age.

Something is very, very wrong. Legally she could’ve gone to school today as COVID free.

@Itisasecret

My daughter is incredibly ill. Strong repeated LTF, different kits the lot. No way it’s not COVID. Negative via SW drive through. Pcr by post tomorrow, that’s if she’s not in hospital before then. She’s going down hill rapidly and she’s primary age.

Something is very, very wrong. Legally she could’ve gone to school today as COVID free.

So sorry hope your daughters OK. Some if my daughters year group are quite poorly postive lft negative pcr.

Was surprised see admissions for under 16.

My toddlers unwell today so hoping its not covid she started nursery 4 weeks ago.

We’re in South West and know of a few children that have had positive LF tests and then negative PCR but then test positive on 2nd or 3rd PCR. Seems like there will be plenty of people going about their business with covid. How long does it take to investigate this type of issue?

I saw some interesting graphs on twitter this morning from the stats people who like to analyse the covid trends.
This graph shows the positive tests in an area as a percentage of the country as a whole. It goes up and down but fairly gradually.
This is what they normally look like.

This graph represents 9 regions in the sw that have been posting bizarre figures since sept. Really really odd distribution.
Definitely points to an issue with the PCRs or a poss a new strain which is harder to detect rather than LFTs not working correctly/ picking up another non covid virus.
Credit to ArtySmokesPS on twitter for the graphs.

My guess is that once they suss out the issue with the PCRs and people start getting the correct results back, figures in the SW will actually be astronomically high because there have been thousands of positive people thinking they were negative trotting about spreading it. Schools are just massive covid pits right now.

In my household I'm still the the only one poorly, feeling rough again today and now I've lost my smell. I can smell some strong things v v faintly (eg olbas oil) but most things not at all. I still have some taste but it's definitely impaired. Blander foods eg bread , pasta taste of absolutely nothing.
But it's fine because the PCR says I don't have covid.

My postal test was marked delivered at 1am so hopefully I will get a result soonish.

@siestalady

This thread makes me feel like it's March 2020 again

Doesn’t it just.

DD is at secondary in one of the areas mentioned in the article. Prior to this term the entire school probably had no more than a dozen cases since March 2020. Some children would have been unwell over the summer with Delta, but most had limited exposure.

In the past month, Covid has affected so many pupils (a lot were ill, but an equal number were not).
The school's attempt to minimise this was to send close contacts home to get a PCR (so one +ve child would possibly require another 10 to get a PCR test). Badly hit years required children to do at least 3 LFT's per week.

So you have a lot of parents trying to get PCR tests for symptomless children (so perhaps they either need to fib about symptoms or +ve LFT so that they get a PCR test to get them back in the classroom). Is that what's causing most of the anomalies?

Wishing a speedy recovery to the unwell, whether or not it is Covid/Flu/something else.

whole twitter thread here quite interesting
twitter.com/ArtySmokesPS/status/1448108103011115013

Does anyone know if you can get your jab if your incubating.

Dd is getting her jab this week and had negative LFTs and PCR and has no symptoms. However her mates have been dropping like flies with positive tests.

NHS And other sources say wait 28 days.

@Atalune

Does anyone know if you can get your jab if your incubating.

Dd is getting her jab this week and had negative LFTs and PCR and has no symptoms. However her mates have been dropping like flies with positive tests.

NHS And other sources say wait 28 days.

How does she know she's incubating?

@Sugarandtime

If so many people who think they have COVID are getting negative PCR results, why are we still having new infections in the 30000’s each day? as reported in the media.

Because the media love to overblow everything. A cold is going round and people are senselessly testing and testing (why? defeats me) are they desperate to know it is covid. Feeding the fear again. Must be a new variant, we need a new test to identify it

Just stop. (unless you need to test for work or extreme vulnerability)

Each test costs the taxpayers money - would you still be testing if you had to pay

She doesn’t

But we have has close contact with quite are people since last week so it does feel imminent.

@madcats interesting... That theory could explain why fewer PCR results in the SW are coming back positive when looked at as a percentage of PCRs done.
I don't think it explain why the case rate in the SW vs National is up and down like a yoyo on that blue graph though.

That was in reply to coffeey

@Atalune Ahh I see. Interesting question. Sorry I don't know the answer but can see the dilemma.

@bunnybuggs I am 'senselessly testing' because I have no wish to kill my elderly parents or friends DD who is extremely vulnerable by unwittingly passing them covid.
My OH is senselessly testing so he does not pass covid to the 150 children that he teaches every day.

NE and my mum and I both had positive LFTs and negative PCRs so I don't believe it's solely in the SE tbf.

[quote Tinysnickers]@sugarandtime I think the worrying thing is what the real case numbers are (40k?) if so many are getting a false negative.[/quote]
Agree. Whether through incompetence, some failure of testing or some evil intent to fake the figures, it seems we don't really know the figures.

I suppose looking at hospital admissions will be what we have to do but it'll be too late to do anything once it gets unmanageable and there will be about 4-6 weeks rising admissions baked in if / when they decide more controls are necessary.

Personally I've never known more people with covid, so many kids and many of them really quite ill too. I don't know what the fuck this government thinks it's doing. It's like some kind of eugenics driven experiment - survival of the fittest.

Did they ever get any co2 monitors into schools? Neither of my kids schools have any.

@Itisasecret

My daughter is incredibly ill. Strong repeated LTF, different kits the lot. No way it’s not COVID. Negative via SW drive through. Pcr by post tomorrow, that’s if she’s not in hospital before then. She’s going down hill rapidly and she’s primary age.

Something is very, very wrong. Legally she could’ve gone to school today as COVID free.

So sorry to hear this, I hope your DD gets better soon.

I've just had an awful thought - maybe they're faking the tests so they don't have to pay for long covid medical support? I have a friend who had covid at the start and long covid thereafter - the fact she didn't have a positive test (because they weren't testing then) has been given as the reason she has not got much help. Because they 'don't know it was covid'. Hopefully a positive LFT will be evidence enough that it was covid, especially given how widespread these issues with PCRs are.

Bristol area here and I know of several people with positive lateral flow tests and Covid symptoms but PCR tests coming back negative.

Also - why is everyone assuming that the LFT positive is reliable and the PCR unreliable? Its almost like people want to be confirmed with covid.

Personally if i had a negative PCR I'd be very happy with that and would crack on with my day. If I felt poorly then (just like - you know - pre covid) I would stay in bed/recover/try and avoid giving it to others until I felt well enough to return to normal life.

@siestalady because some people are then doing a 2nd PCR test and getting a positive a couple of days later.

@siestalady because the case numbers in the SW don't add up to faulty LFDs they add up to a problem with PCRs.
Look at the graph I posted up the page. That represents positive test results in 9 SW areas as a proportion of postive tests nationally. You'd expect them to rise and fall gradually over time, and you'd expect variation day to day, but not to the massive extremes you see on this graph.
Case numbers in Swindon suddenly dropped by 60%. Not what you would expect to see.