Borough plans to begin mass virus testing very soon
HAMMERSMITH and Fulham Council is hoping to start offering more tests with a fast turnaround “very soon”.
They are similar to the tests already being trialled this week in Liverpool.
The borough council’s head of public health, Dr Nicola Lang, told the health, inclusion, social care and accountability committee last Wednesday that the local authority was discussing the tests with the government.
She confirmed: “We are in discussions with the Department of Health on mass testing.”
She said the council hoped to do lateral flow tests, which “look for a bit of protein on the surface of the virus”.
The tests got underway in Liverpool this week and Dr Lang said: “We are planning to start this very soon in Hammersmith and Fulham.”
The test is “a bit like a pregnancy test and the results can be turned around in 20 to 30 minutes, she explained.
However the sensitivity of the tests means the pick-up rate of the infection “is a bit lower”, she said.
The borough’s latest rate of positive test results is 211 per 100,000 people in the seven days to last Wednesday.
Dr Lang said the rate is falling and stressed: “We do extensive testing in the borough with mobile testing units moving around Hammersmith and Fulham.”
The borough is testing 579 per 100,000 residents and the London average is just over 300 per 100,000.
Dr Lang said: “To say we are the highest in London, we are extraordinarily high.”
And she explained that a private medical surgery had been registering coronavirus tests to its office postcode – which accounted for “130 cases falsely attributed to our borough in three-and-a-half weeks.”
The practice has now changed how it registers results.
The borough council’s head of covid response, Linda Jackson, said there are also plans for two local testing centres, to be open from 8am to 8pm seven days a week for the next six months.