The UK Department of Health and Social Care has said it has no plans to stop a rapid test of the coronavirus, despite rumors that the test program will be scaled back due to false positive results.
There is “There are no plans to discontinue the universal program,” the department said Thursday. “With about one in three people not showing symptoms of Covid-19, regular, rapid testing is an essential tool for controlling the spread of the virus … by picking up cases that would not otherwise be detected . “
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The program in question was announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week and promises everyone in England access to two lateral flow coronavirus tests a week. These tests show results in less than 30 minutes and can be self-administered. The program is the largest extension of Johnson’s ‘Operation Moonshot’, a £ 100 billion mass test scheme, and is intended to prevent the UK’s UK reopening leading to an increase in Covid-19 cases.
However, lateral flow tests are less accurate than the PCR tests commonly used to detect the virus. Leaked emails from the government seen by the Guardian on Thursday and reported earlier show that in some parts of London only between 2% and 10% of the positive results are genuine. The tests are more reliable in areas with a higher incidence of Covid-19, but according to the report, only 38% of the country is considered accurate.
The Guardian reported that senior government officials are considering scrapping the mass testing program in response to these figures.
The Department of Health and Social Care refuted these rumors, insisting that lateral flow tests are reliable, the Guardian said “For every 1000 lateral flow tests performed, there is less than one false positive result.” However, data obtained by the BBC last month found that almost one in five positive results could be untrue.
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