Covid-19: The radio host addresses Johnson’s planned script
The prime minister will set his roadmap tomorrow for the country to get out of restrictions, and the tests are a key part of the government’s strategy to deal with Covid, along with vaccines and therapies. At least some schools could be reopened on March 8. But students must be tested twice a week. It was also stated last week that the government plans to ask parents to test their children twice a week at home. The plans have yet to be confirmed, but in Scotland, where children will start returning from Monday, students in their final year of high school will receive two tests at home each week.
The experts urged the government not to repeat the tests, describing them as “crazy” and “treating children like guinea pigs”.
Other scientists questioned the broader value of mass testing, saying that false positive test results could leave us in a “self-perpetuating purgatory.”
Professor Allyson Pollock, former director of the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle University, said: “Mass testing of asymptomatic people is not evaluated and has huge ethical implications.
“Any plan to do mass tests of children in schools is shocking because it is totally unethical because it has not been evaluated. All tests do damage – and there will be damage that we cannot know until we have done a proper assessment.
“Do children and parents know, for example, that they will be excluded from school with a positive test and instructed to isolate together with their parents and all other family members? What are the implications for other children with whom they have contact?
“There will inevitably be psychological damage – some children may be afraid to get tested and there may be a stigma after a positive test, what happens when a child refuses a second test because the first is too painful or uncomfortable?
It is claimed that the government will ask parents to test their children twice a week at home (Image: Getty)
“If the government wants to use the test in schools, it must create an appropriate test or study with ethical approval and informed consent from parents and children.”
She added: “It is unethical to treat children as guinea pigs. Standards of good research practice are not being followed, which is deeply worrying, as research structures and the international research code have been developed to protect participants and prevent harm and coercion.
“If I were the father of a child who goes to school, I would not allow my child to be subjected to repeated tests, unless there was good evidence to show that the benefits outweigh the damage and the costs. In addition, children should not be excluded if they refuse to take a test ”.
Any rapid test is likely to be lateral flow, which is faster than the “gold standard” PCR tests.
But scientists questioned whether the lateral flow test is suitable for the purpose.
Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics and a specialist in mass population screening science at the University of Birmingham, urged the government to “urgently change course” in its reliance on lateral flow tests.
Experts described repeat testing as ‘crazy’ and treated children as ‘guinea pigs’ (Image: Getty)
Writing for BMJ, he and his colleagues said that the large-scale implementation of the tests “can cause serious damage” because of the false results.
He said last night: “If the government switches to lateral flow tests as a metric to measure the rate of infection, that would be worrying, as these tests are not suitable for the purpose and are applied to different populations week by week in a Random.
“I wouldn’t take anything from the side flow as a marker of how we’re doing – and we definitely shouldn’t use side flow as evidence to detect people who have Covid, as it can provide false positive and false negative results.”
He added: “Mass testing in any way on children or adults is not justified as a safe or valid thing to do. There is no evidence to justify the use of this and it will not get us out of these problems, nor do what the government wants me to do. This is because we are testing the wrong people and because of the low sensitivity of the tests. “
Professor Anthony Brookes of the University of Leicester said that even the PCR tests showed false positives.
He stressed that if the mass escalation of tests happens, the number of false positives alone will exceed 1,000 per day.
Boris Johnson will define his roadmap for the country to come out of restrictions tomorrow (Image: Getty)
This was a goal that the government was declared to be the largest number of cases it would tolerate before easing restrictions.
Professor Brookes said: “Recently, 350,000 lateral flow tests have been done, in addition to about 300,000 PCR tests done in one day.
“That would give you a false positive rate of around 2,500 a day.
“There are plans to increase the lateral flow test tenfold.
“If you increase the tests tenfold, as they plan to do, we will have hundreds of thousands of false positive results and a similar proportional increase in deaths from coronavirus and falsely associated hospital admissions.
“I see no sense in testing the mast, since deaths and hospitalizations in the ICU have dropped to levels with which we feel comfortable every year due to other respiratory viruses.
“By the end of this month, vaccines will mean that we are already close to that point. It makes absolutely no sense and is obviously ridiculous – they might as well tell us to use red clown noses to end the coronavirus. It is a self-perpetuating purgatory ”.
A DHSC spokesman said: “About one in three people with coronavirus have no symptoms and can transmit the virus without knowing it. Targeted asymptomatic testing helps to detect these cases and break the transmission chains.
“Lateral flow tests are effective in detecting infectious cases of coronavirus, are easy to use and provide results in 30 minutes, ensuring that those with a positive test can isolate immediately – with more than 81,342 cases identified to date.”
The Department of Education did not respond to questions about the claims of mass testing.
When care minister Helen Whately was asked to comment on this last week, shd did not confirm or deny the allegations, but said, “Next week, more information will be defined on how back to school will work.”
She added: “There is work being done to analyze how the tests will help schools to return. But there will be more details on that next week. “