New Year fears over Covid tests
A LEADING scientist has warned it is ‘very worrying’ that a shortage of Covid-19 tests could lead to people mixing over the New Year without being able to see whether they are infectious.
Professor Peter Openshaw, who sits on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said the conditions at a New Year’s Eve gathering were ‘perfect’ for spreading coronavirus.
The UK Government is scrambling to secure supplies of tests from around the world to meet a surge in demand as people try to comply with guidance to limit the spread of the Omicron variant.
In a letter to MPs, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the supply of lateral flow tests (LFD) was being tripled in January and February from a pre-Omicron plan of 100 million to 300 million per month.
“To respond to anticipated demand over the coming few weeks we are buying hundreds of millions more LFD tests, bringing new products on board and accelerating their deployment to the public,” he said.
But ‘in light of the huge demand for LFDs seen over the last three weeks, we expect to need to constrain the system at certain
points over the next two weeks to manage supply over the course of each day, with new tranches of supply released regularly throughout each day’.
By 9am yesterday morning, home delivery slots for lateral flow tests were unavailable on the Gov.UK website.
Pharmacies have also complained about patchy supplies of lateral flow kits.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people in England heading out for New Year’s Eve festivities today to get tested.
But Prof Openshaw raised concerns about the prospect of people unable to get tested attending gatherings.
“I think it’s very worrying indeed,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We know the situations in which transmission happens and fortunately I don’t think we are facing the sort of lockdown that was necessary in order to cope in the very earliest part of this year.
“But we do know that crowding together in poorly ventilated spaces, particularly if you are shouting over loud music and so on, is absolutely perfect in terms of transmitting this very, very highly transmissible virus.”
In England – unlike other parts of the UK – nightclubs remain open and there are no limits on social mixing.
The NHS Covid Pass is required for entry to nightclubs, but this can be obtained by people who are double-jabbed, rather than requiring proof of a negative test.
The UK Health Security Agency said on Wednesday that eight million lateral flow test kits would be made available to pharmacies by New Year’s Eve.
The Government is under increasing pressure to up the capacity of coronavirus testing as case numbers reached their highest level yet. A new record was set for the daily number of coronavirus cases on Wednesday, as all four UK nations reported their figures for the first time since Christmas Eve.