HULL SET FOR MASS TESTING
... WHEN IT WILL START AND WHO WILL BE FIRST
DETAILS of the first programme of mass testing for coronavirus in Hull ll have been revealed.
The city will be allocated an initial al batch of 10,000 lateral flow tests as s part of a national pilot of mass community-based asymptomatic testing which started recently in Liverpool.
The first batch is expected to be followed by a weekly allocation of around 26,000 testing kits with testing scheduled to start next month.
Priority groups who will receive the first tests are likely to include personnel in the emergency services, elderly and vulnerable people not in care homes, council staff working in adult and children’s social care, university students, teachers and prison officers.
Other workplaces considered to be essential to the city’s economy will also be offered the tests. The lateral flow test involves a handheld kit that gives a result within 30 minutes without the need for it to be sent to a laboratory.
Similar to a pregnancy test, a paper-based cartridge changes colour if fluid from a nasal swab or saliva indicates a positive result. Results are typically given via a follow-up text message, email or phone call.
Anyone who tests positive during the pilot must immediately self-isolate for at least ten days and their contacts will be traced by NHS Test and Trace.
All other people in their household must also self-isolate for 14 days from the day the person first became ill, or from the day of the test, if they have no symptoms.
Tim Fielding, Hull’s deputy director of public health, said: “It’s a new form of test which still tests for antigens, but does not need to be processed in a laboratory.
“They can be performed there and then and turned around in about 20 to 30 minutes.
“There’s a lower level of clincal skill level needed to administer them and, potentially, they th can be admninistered by people p themselves and give a result.
“We are in the early stages of lo looking at the planning about where th they will be utilised and how we will d do that.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to underestimate the scale and the challenge around the logistics and governance that needs to go into putting together a service like this. It is no small undertaking.”
Last week the city’s three MPS wrote to health secretary Matt Hancock asking for the Army to the deployed in Hull to help with the roll-out of the new tests as it has been doing in Liverpool in recent weeks.
Public Health England and Oxford University have confirmed the lateral flow tests being carried out in Liverpool are 99.6 per cent accurate.
Already over 50,000 residents in Liverpool have been tested using the new tests along with another 10,000 people who work or study there.
Out of that total, 336 people have been identified as having Covid19, but without displaying any symptoms of the virus.
Mr Fielding said the new lateral flow tests would be in addition to existing regular testing being carried out in the city’s care homes and being offered to frontline NHS staff.