Lateral flow tests are now part of UK life, with billions spent on test kits. Has it been worth it?
Lateral flow tests are now part of life for much of the the UK. Billions of pounds of public money have been spent on test kits. Has it all been worth it?
Hailing runs Sparkle Nails & Beauty in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham. She had a full list of customers coming in for treatments after New Year and had to quickly rebook all of them."I take two tests a week because I see so many people as part of my job," she says. "It was just lucky I found out so quickly."
The idea of population-wide Covid testing on this scale was first revealed in leaked documents in the autumn of 2020. The plan was to use millions of cheap, throwaway lateral flow tests that could give a result in 15 minutes, rather than the more sensitive PCR tests which had to be sent off and processed in a laboratory.
But data now suggests much of that concern was misplaced. Since March, 183,939 pupils in England have tested positive on a lateral flow test at home and then had a sample sent off to a laboratory for a follow-up PCR test. In total 89% of those swabs returned the same positive result.The proportion of false positives does increase when the prevalence of the disease falls in society.
But false positives are not the only possible drawback with mass testing on this scale. Some scientists are concerned that the public are often far too trusting if their lateral flow test comes back negative.
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