A week ago, 451,191 DIY Coronavirus test kits were sent to the British care homes. But only 117,759 (nearly 26%) came back to process for diagnosing coronavirus. All others are either unused or disposed of without using them. But the strange thing is that the ÿtotal number of kits is mentioned in the government’s daily testing record instead of these used kits.
Health experts are calling out on these questionable measures of calculating the cases and coronavirus response.
Carl Heneghan from Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine says that not using these kits wouldn’t make them a part of ‘daily tests’.
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It makes no sense to add the unused kits in the daily test stats, not only it is the manipulation of the data but also wastage of the DIY coronavirus test kits. He further says that it is not a surprise that these unused kits are not sent back. These kits are very simple and only requires a person to take a nasal swab and a swab from the throat. However, it may be difficult for some people to do it by themselves.
All patients who have used these DYI coronavirus testing kits can send their samples via Royal Mail postboxes and there is no need to arrange a courier service to pick these.
Paul Hunter teaches Medicine at the University of East Anglia (UEA) says that it leaves a huge question mark on the efficiency of the system when thousands of these DIY coronavirus test kits rest at nursing homes or end up in garbage bins, unused. But they are still a part of the official records.
All health experts recommend effective testing and tracing to be the only way to control coronavirus cases in the UK. The results for these tests should not take more than 24 hours. But this situation is the opposite in reality. Most people wait for more than 24 hours to get their results back. For example, nearly 100,000 DIY testing kits were delivered last Tuesday but only 9% of the home test results were returned.
More than half of the people using these home testing swabs waited for at least 48 hours to get their test results. Waiting for long hours especially if someone is coronavirus positive not only a threat for him but also for people around him.
NHS reports the efficacy of the tests to be better than a month ago as 72% of people are able to get their reports within 24 hours. This number is 61% for the mobile testing facility users.
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Dido Harding, the chairperson of the “NHS Improvement” says that there has been a huge improvement in terms of rapid evaluation of the tests. In terms of disease control, it is necessary to trace these positive cases and tell them to follow self-isolation for saving everyone around them.
NHS is working promptly with the turnaround time of these cases to be 14 hours on average.
On the other side, the British PM Boris Johnson says that all test excluding the postal samples will be processed and reported within one day. The Department for Health and Social Care is now ensuring the rapid response to the samples from care homes and making sure that the kits are used appropriately.
