Covid - 19 Testing

Weeks after the scumbag 'nasty party' said it was capable and has the facilities to test 100,000 patients a day, it seems that yet again THEY LIED !!!

Parts of the Care system are still without adequate testing equipment, and in some instances even without adequate PPE.


UK's largest social care provider warns it will have no access to regular coronavirus testing for five weeks
Care UK CEO says Department of Health response 'sorely lacking'

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The UK’s largest independent provider of social care has issued a warning that it will have no access to regular coronavirus testing for residents and staff in England for at least five weeks.

In a letter to relatives of residents, Care UK chief executive Andrew Knight, said the Department of Health was blaming issues with kits from a particular supplier, but said communication with government had been “sorely lacking”.

Liberal Democrats said that thousands of people would miss out on vital tests as a result of the issue. Days after a damning parliamentary report which found that Boris Johnson's government threw care home residents "to the wolves" in the early stages of the pandemic, party health spokesperson Munira Wilson said the new revelations showed that this was still the case today.

Care UK runs more than 110 homes across the country, and Mr Knight warned that similar problems were affecting other major care organisations. The halt in regular testing comes as Mr Johnson is stressing the importance of the test and trace system to fend off the threat of a second wave of coronavirus.

It is understood that the government's recall of kits supplied by private company Randox on safety grounds on 15 July caused significant disruption to the provision of tests for weekly and 28-day tests in care homes in England, while access remained readily available in Scotland.


Since 6 July, care homes in England have been promised regular testing on a weekly basis for staff and every 28 days for residents. Repeat testing for asymptomatic individuals was initially limited to care homes looking after people aged over 65 or those with dementia, but is due be rolled out to all care homes from August.

SC) stressed that anyone living or working in a care home who has coronavirus symptoms or suspects they have the disease will still be able to access testing via Local Health Protection teams.

Announcing the rollout of regular tests less than four weeks ago, health secretary Matt Hancock said the scheme would “not only keep residents and care workers safe, but give certainty and peace of mind to the families who may be worried about their loved ones, and give staff the confidence to do what they do best”.

But Mr Knight said that optimism about regular testing had been “short-lived” and it was now “increasingly difficult to access regular testing across all of our homes”.

The Care UK CEO said: “We have been notified by DHSC that due to an issue with a particular test from one supplier, we will no longer have access to weekly testing for colleagues or monthly testing for residents.

“Communication from the Government on this matter has been sorely lacking. We have also been in contact with the DHSC, the Social Care Taskforce and the care minister to ask that this situation is resolved quickly, but the latest indications we have suggest that for most of our homes in England there will be a minimum of five weeks wait before we are able to access another round of testing.

“We have been exploring options for privately-funded testing, but as yet have been unable to identify a supplier who is able to reliably support us at the scale we require. This experience is mirrored across other major care organisations.”

Regular testing for care homes was introduced following anger over coronavirus outbreaks which claimed thousands of lives of elderly residents in the early weeks of the pandemic.

But on 15 July, the DHSC announced that some kits supplied by Northern Ireland-based Randox were being withdrawn as they did not meet safety standards. The department said at the time that it would be "supporting all testing settings to receive replacement kits as soon as possible". But care sources said that new supplies had not materialised at the necessary scale.

Mr Knight told families of residents: “I am sure many of you will find this situation as disappointing as I do, especially given the positive messages the government is still issuing about the scale of the testing programme it is supposedly offering.”

Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Munira Wilson said: "If we needed any evidence that this Government is still throwing care homes to the wolves, then this is it. From the very beginning of the pandemic this Government failed to ensure care homes had access to adequate testing and PPE, whilst discharging patients with the virus into their homes.

"This letter is damning. With a potential second peak on the horizon, the UK's largest provider of social care no longer having access to regular testing for staff and residents will leave thousands of our most vulnerable exposed to coronavirus.

"The prime minister and his government are not learning the lessons they need to if we are to prevent more people losing their lives. An inquiry into the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis must begin now, so ministers can learn from their errors and help protect families right across the country from more heartache."

 

I think it's a good thing they can't reach their quota, that means less people have to have the chip installed into their noses and that's a win.

 

Anoither VG idjit !!! - one does not need a 'chip' installed in the nasal passages. to test for Covis - 19 !!!

 

And the relevance of this in relation to the original thread is ???

 

Corona virus

 

Viruses contained within electronic equipment has no relevance to Covid -19 virus whatsoever !!!

 

It's the Rona

 

Irrelevant !!!

 

You don't think she was just maybe joking around with the nasal chip thing?

 

Look this issue is really just about your government starting to run out of money, it will get far worse over the coming 18 months

 

The nasal chip is legit bro. They don't need to go into your nose to test for a virus that's spread orally. Anybody getting a covid test is getting a chip.

Remember the first wave of testing?had nothing to do with the nose, but now they want to chip you.

 

They might do in Germany, but that's not the way the test is conducted here - we seem to be more civilised than that !!!

 

Yet more evidence of the scumbag 'nasty party's' track and trace system failure !!!

Coronavirus: Halt 'failing' Serco's new contract to run test-and-trace services, Labour says
'The stakes are too high to tolerate failure in either the operation or the design of this crucial public service', Matt Hancock told


A new lucrative contract for private giant Serco to run test-and-trace services should be stopped, Labour says – arguing the stakes are too high to “tolerate failure”.

The government is urged not to shell out a further £300m in a decision due later this month, amid rising criticism of the company’s failure to find and isolate coronavirus cases.

Instead, the system should be led by local public health leaders, who have proved they are more successful in tracing the contacts of infected people, Labour said.

The call comes after it was revealed that just 56 per cent of close contacts handled online or by call centres run by Serco and Sitel, a second private firm used, are being reached.

In stark contrast, 90 per cent were contacted by Blackburn with Darwen Council, one of a growing number of exasperated town halls now setting up their own systems.

That success was put down to local knowledge and a Blackburn phone number, instead of the 0300 number used by Boris Johnson’s “world-beating” centralised system, which provokes suspicion.

Now Labour has written to Matt Hancock, the health secretary, to say Serco’s contract should be paused because it is “ineffective and not fit for purpose”.

“It is our view that no additional funding should be given to Serco as part of this contract,” says the letter, from shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth and Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister.

The pair added: “The stakes are too high to tolerate failure in either the operation or the design of this crucial public service.



“We have long argued that test and trace should be led by local areas, backed up by the resources and national support to make this happen. It is not too late to improve the system and put in place new, locally-led contact tracing measures.”

The Serco deal has been shrouded in secrecy, but Labour said an initial £108m award is due to soar to £410m, with a decision in a fortnight’s time.

The letter also raises questions about the vast number of subcontractors employed by Serco, totalling 85 the party said.

It demands answers on “numerous reports in the press about contact tracers being paid to be effectively idle for large amounts of time, given little work or instruction”.

And it criticises when Serco “revealed the personal email addresses of 296 contact tracers in May”, asking: “How is this acceptable?”

Ministers should publish the performance measures set for the firm and “the breakdown of performance against these indicators”, the letter says.

Mr Hancock has been accused of an obsession with hopes for a contract-tracing app – now abandoned it seems – and for using private firms over experienced public officials.

However, there are signs that ministers are going cool on Serco, its own boss suggesting some of its 10,500 staff will be shed because of a lack of work for them to do.

 

In my employed profession, we pushed for action and stood firm, now we have forced the issue, and have PPE and regular Testing readily available

 

Yes but is the PPE of an acceptable quality and standard ??? and is the Covid - 19 testing sufficiently robust ???

 

Yes - They have been Risk Assessed with three knd of designs fit for specific use
In our line of work - it has to be

 

Another scumbag 'nasty party' failure !!!


Test and Trace system fails to reach 80% target for ninth week in a row

PA
Aug 27th 2020 7:38AM

Three-quarters of close contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 were reached through the NHS Test and Trace system, once again falling short of the Government’s target, the latest figures show.

Some 75.5% of close contacts in England were reached in the week ending August 19.

While this is up from 71.6% in the previous week, it is the ninth week in a row where the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) target of isolating 80% of contacts of coronavirus cases within 48-72 hours has been missed.

Ahead of this week’s figures being published, Health Secretary Matt Hancock acknowledged the system was “not quite there”.

He told LBC radio on Thursday: “One of the challenges is we want to get NHS Test and Trace up to over 80% of contacts, getting them to self-isolate – we’re at just over 75%, so we’re nearly there but not quite there.”

The figures, published by the Department of Health and Social Care, show that 65,398 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England have had their cases transferred to the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing system since its launch.

Of this total, 50,876 people (77.8%) were reached and asked to provide details of recent contacts while 12,851 (19.7%) were not reached.

A further 1,671 people (2.6%) could not be reached because their communication details had not been provided, the figures covering the period May 28 to August 19, showed.

The statistics published today show that every week we consistently reach the majority of people testing positive and their contacts, and have now reached almost 300,000 people who may have unknowingly passed the virus on

Dido Harding, Interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection
Local health protection teams continued to perform better in reaching contacts and asking them to self-isolate than cases handled online or by call centres.

For cases handled by local teams, 95.6% of contacts were reached and asked to self-isolate in the week to August 19.

By contrast, for those cases handled either online or by call centres, 61.6% of close contacts have been reached.

Since the launch of Test and Trace, 246,262 close contacts of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 have now been reached through the system and asked to self-isolate.

This is 80.6% out of a total of 305,725 people identified as close contacts.

The remaining 59,463 people (19.4%) were identified as close contacts, but were not reached.

Interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection Baroness Dido Harding, said: “This week marks a milestone for NHS Test and Trace, which has now been in operation for more than three months.

“The statistics published today show that every week we consistently reach the majority of people testing positive and their contacts, and have now reached almost 300,000 people who may have unknowingly passed the virus on.

NHS Test and Trace statistics [since launch]

➡️ 4.4 million individuals tested for the first time

➡️ 297,138 people reached by NHS Test and Trace

➡️ 81% of identified close contacts reached

— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) August 27, 2020

“This country now has the capacity to test for coronavirus and trace contacts on an unprecedented scale to stop the spread of the virus.

“We will continue to build the service further to reach more and more people and to scale up our testing capacity by expanding our network of testing sites and investing in new technologies.”

Meanwhile, researchers in Norwich said they had successfully completed a pilot project for weekly testing.

Launched at the end of July, the project was delivered by the Earlham Institute, the University of East Anglia (UEA), the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals, the John Innes Centre, the Quadram Institute and The Sainsbury Laboratory – all based on Norwich Research Park.

They said the study, which involved more than 3,000 tests from around 800 Norwich Research Park staff and students, could be used as a template for establishing local testing sites across the UK, taking advantage of under-utilised regional knowledge and infrastructure.

Professor Dylan Edwards, pro-vice-chancellor for the faculty of medicine and health sciences at UEA and one of the project co-ordinators, said: “During this pilot, regular testing has helped protect a small community and reassured them they’re not unknowingly spreading the virus.

“It’s now time to introduce a programme of mass population testing so we can see exactly where the virus is, how it’s spreading, and act rapidly to disrupt the chain of transmission.”

 

Hi Vlad . I hope your keeping well. I havn't posted for ages but I felt compelled to place some comments especially as I have had the virus way back in March .

As regards testing my comments are as follows.

Not many people including myself will answer a 0300 number . As most of us will know 0300 is used by cold callers trying to flog ice to Eskimos .

Not many people if asked over the phone can recall everyone they crossed paths with in the last 24 hours.and have their details. Like the lady sat across the way on the bus for example .

The Track and Trace slips or various singing in books at Pubs and Restaurants will probably be riddled with made up names and telephone numbers . I even signed in as Mr M Mouse at one establishment just to see if anything is checked.

It doesn't take into account those who have had already the virus. Whilst we are in the minority at the moment our numbers are growing and we observe the social distancing restrictions and the wearing of face coverings with gritted teeth sometimes especially when we see those not observing the rules . Its highly unlikely that one will get the virus again . The recent Hong Kong example having read the write up the person had 2 different virus' Sars Covid and Covid 19. That's like comparing lemons and limes IMO. And at 20 million cases now worldwide I would have more chance of winning the Lottery than getting the virus again .So I will take my chance !

I feel that some of the data and figures that the Government are stating is very much over stated to allay public fears and to try and give people confidence .

In all I think there are more holes in the Track and Trace system than a hedgehogs pillow but its the best we have got .

 

I accept that the track and trace is never going to be 'perfect', but it could be 1000% better than it actually is, all because of the scumbag 'nasty party's' mis-management of the whole programme.