Free PCRs only likely for a max of another 6 weeks

[RedToothBrush]

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/11/uk-treasury-pushes-to-end-most-free-covid-testing-despite-experts-warnings

Several sources told the Guardian that Rishi Sunak’s department wants to end most PCR testing for people with Covid symptoms, possibly by the end of March. The exception would be those in hospitals, high-risk settings and for the 1.3m extremely vulnerable people who are eligible for antivirals if they contract Covid.

Under the plans, everyone else with symptoms would be either given some free lateral flow tests or no testing at all. A third option would be restricting the offer of lateral flows to symptomatic people over 50 and the clinically vulnerable. The advice for people without symptoms to take routine lateral flow tests is expected to be scrapped entirely.

and

However, the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) has been urging caution within the government and has been pushing to keep existing testing arrangements in place until at least 1 April.

Since when did The Treasury set health policy?

OK, they can force Dept of Health to make hard choices by limiting resources, but to lay out health policy in this way shows how very dysfunctional the current administration is.

I don't think Javid even understands his brief, and is far from mastering it.

Rishi Sunak is a pound shop chancellor.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

If you want a strong economy, you need a healthy population who have a decent NHS and education system to get them there.

So short sighted, no sense of the bigger picture.

What happens if in a few months someone catches Covid and is off sick recovering and an employer requires a PCR test, who will pay for this? My employer won't accept a Lateral Flow Test on it's own as proof of Covid as they think people are faking it unless PCR backs it up. Yet friends in the Civil Service have said they only have to submit a Lateral Flow Test.

I have a couple of friends who work at the testing sites they were told a while ago their contracts would be ending in March and won't be renewed

Fits with the isolation ending so makes sense. Why would people be testing if you don’t have to isolate?

@countrylady2

What happens if in a few months someone catches Covid and is off sick recovering and an employer requires a PCR test, who will pay for this? My employer won't accept a Lateral Flow Test on it's own as proof of Covid as they think people are faking it unless PCR backs it up. Yet friends in the Civil Service have said they only have to submit a Lateral Flow Test.

Surely the usual absence policy will apply? The person won't know they have Covid specifically if testing is rationed so they will call in as unfit to work just as they always would have done with any other illness. Equally they may be well enough to work despite having Covid.

Clearly all employers have different approaches to absence but that was always the case. My work already treats Covid like any other illness... self certify for 7 days and then a GP needs to provide a fit note. We get paid but we also have a strict disciplinary process for those who have high absence levels.

How will this work in a childcare or education setting?

My DD was sent home from nursery on Friday as she had a cough, and she’s not allowed back into nursery until she had a negative PCR. Seems to me the only two choices after free PCRs end would be letting kids with potential COVID in, or sending every kid with a cough home (which surely just wouldn’t work - the first winter in nursery they’re coughing and sniffing constantly as they build up their immunity?)

Or nurseries will be expected to fund PCR tests (spoiler, they’re already chronically underfunded, so that’s a non-starter). Or parents will foot the bill, making nursery even more than the current 20% of our household income it counts for. And isolating the kids from deprived backgrounds who are there on free hours because of the incontrovertible evidence it improves their social and educational outcomes.

I’m far from a covid doomsayer, I reckon to most points we need to crack on at this stage, I’m just not sure how it’s going to work.

@ShadowPuppets well isolation for Covid will end so children with a cough will be allowed in, whether it’s Covid or not? (Which they won’t know).

I guess for those who want the sensible thing to do at this point would be to stockpile a few boxes of LFT.

@ShadowPuppets

How will this work in a childcare or education setting?

My DD was sent home from nursery on Friday as she had a cough, and she’s not allowed back into nursery until she had a negative PCR. Seems to me the only two choices after free PCRs end would be letting kids with potential COVID in, or sending every kid with a cough home (which surely just wouldn’t work - the first winter in nursery they’re coughing and sniffing constantly as they build up their immunity?)

Or nurseries will be expected to fund PCR tests (spoiler, they’re already chronically underfunded, so that’s a non-starter). Or parents will foot the bill, making nursery even more than the current 20% of our household income it counts for. And isolating the kids from deprived backgrounds who are there on free hours because of the incontrovertible evidence it improves their social and educational outcomes.

I’m far from a covid doomsayer, I reckon to most points we need to crack on at this stage, I’m just not sure how it’s going to work.

I’m hoping it will mean the end to kids being sent home with mild coughs/colds. No free tests available jeans no testing for these things as people won’t pay. Nurseries will have to update their policies to reflect this.

I am sure people ill enough to need medical care will still get them at hospital or the gp, so medical professionals can target the treatment.

But with isolation ending, its just normal sickness procedures for everyone else. Presumably it would only be curiosity you'd test for anyway.

Obviously if free testing is no longer a "thing", then employers, nurseries and schools will have to change their policies. This requiring a negative test to prove you don't have a certain illness is a very new thing and it will just go back to how it was in 2019 and for years before that.

They will treat Covid as any other illness. You keep your child at home, or stay off work sick until you're well enough to go back.

Whether or not you agree with ending Covid isolation rules I think the only possible way of doing it (whether now.. in six months.. in five years…) is to end routine testing and isolation at roughly the same time.

You can’t have isolation saying but testing ending - then you go back to the lockdown 1 scenario where you had to assume you had Covid with any symptom as you couldn’t test and half the workforce is off all the time..

You can’t get rid of isolation but keep mandatory testing for asymptotic or mild symptoms - it’s hugely costly for the government and when you are expecting people to then do nothing with the information what’s the point? Presumably testing will stay for a long, long time yet within the NHS and for the CEV.

Personally I am glad that we are working towards returning to normal life but I think the government is wrong to be getting rid of the ONS infection survey at this point.

People have been saying those who are CEV/otherwise vulnerable need to keep themselves safe but a big part of this has been others being able to do an LFT before meeting them. That will become a lot harder if they are no longer free.

And let's just hope there are no worse variants on the horizon because we'll lose any ability to track them.

I disagree with the isolation rules ending so early. I would like to continue to self isolate if I had covid out of respect and care for more vulnerable people and also because I don’t want the virus to spread and risk lockdown. The trouble is that the symptoms of covid and so vague and similar to a cold there is no way of self diagnosing covid.

@Stopsnowing

I disagree with the isolation rules ending so early. I would like to continue to self isolate if I had covid out of respect and care for more vulnerable people and also because I don’t want the virus to spread and risk lockdown. The trouble is that the symptoms of covid and so vague and similar to a cold there is no way of self diagnosing covid.

You’ll still be able to isolate if you want to. It’ll be a choice instead of being forced. Tests will be available to but for those who want too.

It makes sense.

@Overthebow

Fits with the isolation ending so makes sense. Why would people be testing if you don’t have to isolate?

Makes sense I agree

I expected everything would end as the costs have been huge.

This is stupidity - they just want to shut it down because ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is a national drug it seems!

It is the wrong thing to do, but this government is shit, so here we are.

And let's just hope there are no worse variants on the horizon because we'll lose any ability to track them

Quite.

What could possibly go wrong? Always wise when you have been through an economy-smashing and health system-destroying crisis to voluntarily leave yourself voluntarily vulnerable to a repeat episode.

They are either extremely thick, or massive cunts, or both. My view is they are both.

I am an Ofsted Registered Childminder. I stopped working a couple of weeks ago and Covid rules changing was part of my decision making process. As someone who is CV and who gets very very unwell with coughs I just new that I sadly couldn't carry on. Not least due to loss of income for an indefinite period of time.

My husband works in a Nursery and between us we have pretty good experience of how childcare settings have been impacted by covid behind the scenes. I think all settings will be very cautious and I think it's unlikely they'll all follow the same rules. I think different places will make their own rules based on this new guidance. The new guidance will form part of the existing advised exclusions from public health.

If you Google public health exclusion table you get a list of illnesses, eg meningitis, chickenpox etc. I suspect Covid will be added to the list and diagnosis will be by the existing channels. Eg you know your child has meningitis or mumps as the dr says so. Most childcare settings have the rule "they need to be well enough to be here", so if they aren't they stay at home until they are better and will sometimes see a doctor who will make a diagnosis. That's my very simple guesswork but I suspect it'll be more complex than that.

@Overthebow

Fits with the isolation ending so makes sense. Why would people be testing if you don’t have to isolate?

I would still like to get a PCR before visiting vulnerable family/friends. Quite happy to pay. Have been testing positive on lateral flows since July so would have no way of knowing I was asymptomatic without getting a PCR (and yes I know they are not foolproof but at least I will know I have done everything I possibly can).

@labyrinthlaziness

And let's just hope there are no worse variants on the horizon because we'll lose any ability to track them

Quite.

What could possibly go wrong? Always wise when you have been through an economy-smashing and health system-destroying crisis to voluntarily leave yourself voluntarily vulnerable to a repeat episode.

They are either extremely thick, or massive cunts, or both. My view is they are both.

^this

I actually think there is, I was reading about deltacron which I believe is under observation atm.

People have been saying those who are CEV/otherwise vulnerable need to keep themselves safe but a big part of this has been others being able to do an LFT before meeting them. That will become a lot harder if they are no longer free.

Well presumably they will be able to pay for them.

The U.K. is the only country I know of that made LFTs free in the first place. They were never free in ROI (or France or Spain from what I've read on here).

Well presumably they will be able to pay for them

Newsflash: not everyone has the same amount of disposable income. People with ill-health are also far more likely to have income problems, but who gives a shit anyway - presumably they are just lazy bastards as they let themselves get too ill to work?