Finally, health chiefs launch mass testing scheme: 1,000 households to get antibody tests to trace how far the killer disease has already spread - and 20,000 homes will get swab tests within DAYS
- New study to be launched in order to track spread of the coronavirus in Britain
- Around 20,000 households in England to be contacted to take part in research
- Some 1,000 of these will also have blood samples taken to look for antibodies
- Tests will be carried out to understand the rate of infection and virus antibodies
- Antibody testing considered crucial in providing an exit from current lockdown
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Health chiefs have finally launched a mass coronavirus antibody testing study to trace how far the killer disease has already spread in Britain.
A thousand households will have their blood samples taken every month by a nurse or trained medic, the Department of Health last night announced.
Antibodies are substances made by the immune system in response to an infection and can be picked-up by a simple finger-prick blood test.
The announcement marks a step forward after months of the Government dragging its feet on a programme which scientists say is essential to ending lockdown because it's the only way of getting a true picture of the size of the outbreak.
Antibody testing, which has been picked up on much larger scale in other countries, forms a vital part of the Government's 'five-pillar' testing strategy - but officials have so far only managed 4,900 tests and just 51 were done yesterday.
Who takes responsibility for antibody testing remains unclear, with parts being done by Public Health England and the new scheme falling to scientists at the University of Oxford working on behalf of the Department of Health.
The UK's scheme is dwarfed by one being carried out in the Italian region of Lombardy, for example, where medics now plan to do 20,000 tests per day.
A separate scheme in the US will involve 40,000 healthcare workers, while Andorra has ordered enough antibody kits to test its population twice.
British officials have also begun a separate scheme to carry out regular swab tests on 25,000 people, who will be tested around 15 times a year to see whether they have the disease, so the Government can keep track of its spread.
Swab tests can only tell if someone is currently infected. They do not look for signs of past infection, like antibody tests.
The Department of Health revealed up to 300,000 people are expected to take part in the swab testing scheme within the first year.
A technician scanning test tubes containing live samples during the opening of the new COVID-19 testing lab at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow on Wednesday
Antibody testing - known as the 'have you had it' test - is still a controversial subject in the UK and authorities have been accused of blocking out commercial tests which could be done at home en masse because they don't think they're good enough.
The scheme has been slow to get off the ground because of the Government's insistence on high standards.
The 98 per cent accuracy demanded by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is higher than the majority of tests on the market and higher than the commercial test approved in the US.
The new testing round will be done by scientists at the University of Oxford on behalf of the Government.
Professor Ian Jones, a virus expert at the University of Reading, said today: 'The newly announced tests should at last address the level of virus circulation in the community and, to a lesser extent, the level of past infections.
'The infectivity tests, the “have you got it” tests, are possible as a result of the scaled up testing facilities now operating in the Lighthouse Labs.
'The much lower number of antibody tests, the “have you had it” tests, reflect the fact that these tests are currently much less scalable, at least with an acceptable level of accuracy.
'Together they will give important data on how prevalent the infection is and has been. Where this has been done elsewhere the level of infection has been 20 to 50 times higher than the known positives and we must wait to see if this is also the case in the UK.'
The hope for antibody testing is that, when widespread, it can give a clearer, faster picture of the size of the country's outbreak.
Currently, the numbers of people in hospital is the most accurate day-by-day measure but this represents only a small proportion of patients and can be out of date because it may take a week or more for someone to end up in hospital.
The Department of Health is funding the antibody and swab-testing study, which will be done alongside the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
As well as the separate study, Public Health England has been analysing blood tests for antibodies since the beginning of April.
Officials said they were expanding the programme during April 'so that we have the potential to test around 5,000 samples per week'.
But with just a week until May, figures show fewer than 5,000 samples - including just 51 yesterday - have been analysed at the Porton Down laboratory.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: 'Understanding more about the rate of COVID-19 infection in the general population, and the longer-term prevalence of antibodies, is a vital part of our ongoing response to this virus.
'This survey will help to track the current extent of transmission and infection in the UK, while also answering crucial questions about immunity as we continue to build up our understanding of this new virus.
'Together, these results will help us better understand the spread of the virus to date, predict the future trajectory and inform future action we take, including crucially the development of ground-breaking new tests and treatments.'
Health Secretary Matt Hancock during a hybrid session of the House of Commons yesterday. He said the new survey will help track the current extent of transmission in the UK
Official statistics showed that the number of people in hospital with coronavirus continues to fall in many parts of the country
The number of new cases of the virus in the UK was up on the previous day but is down from over the weekend
Antibody testing is considered crucial in providing an exit pathway from the current lockdown, and also providing data to those developing a vaccine.
Health chiefs have yet to approve an antibody test for mass use, despite promises that one would be available to buy from Amazon or Boots weeks ago.
But officials claim the home tests they have looked at are not accurate enough to be used, saying they range from between 50 and 70 per cent.
Experts stress the more people screened, the clearer the picture on the true size of the UK's crisis, which began spreading on British soil in February.
Participants in the Government's antibody test will be asked to give further samples monthly for the next 12 months.
Blood for antibody tests will not be taken in any households where someone has symptoms of COVID-19 or is currently self-isolating or shielding.
Officials said participants in the swab-testing rollout will form a representative sample of the UK population by age and geography, with initial findings expected in early May.
Participants are being selected from the tens of thousands of Brits who have already taken part in other ONS surveys.
Those selected will provide samples from self-administered nose and throat swabs and answer questions during a home visit by a trained healthcare professional.
They will be asked to take further tests every week for the first five weeks, then every month for a year.
In total, the Government says some 25,000 people will take part in the pilot phase with plans to extend it to up to around 300,000 over the next 12 months.
Scientists will also analyse blood samples from adults in around 1,000 households to determine how many people have developed antibodies to the virus.
Nurses from the private firm IQVIA will carry out the antibody tests, to reduce the burden on NHS resources and personnel.
Ministers announced plans to enrol up to 20,000 people to carry out the immunity tests earlier this month.
It is unclear when the scheme will be increased in size, or if officials have opted to carry out a smaller surveillance study.
Although swab test results will be given to participants via their GP, a letter seen by PA says those participating in the antibody test will not receive their results.
The de-identified blood samples will be sent to Oxford University to be tested for antibodies, while infection testing swabs are to be sent to UK Biocentre.
A scientist holding an antibody test to use with a blood sample for the coronavirus at a laboratory of the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology at the InfectoGnostics research campus in Jena, Germany
A lab technician wearing full PPE cleaning a test tube containing a live sample taken from people tested for coronavirus at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow yesterday
On Tuesday it was announced the first British human trials for a vaccine will begin recruiting volunteers this week.
It is hoped the new inoculation, which normally would take around 18 months to develop, could see large-scale production under way as early as September – only nine months after the virus came to light in Wuhan, China.
Yesterday the UK has announced 763 more hospital deaths from the coronavirus, taking Britain's total number of victims to 18,100.
But the coronavirus outbreak in the UK may have killed more than 41,000 people already when non-hospital deaths are included.
An analysis of backdated statistics by the Financial Times has predicted that, by the time care home deaths and unrecorded hospital fatalities are added up, it could emerge that 41,102 people had died by April 21. The official toll was 17,337.
What is the REAL death rate of COVID-19? Antibody testing studies suggest mortality rate is up to 70 TIMES lower than official figures - as scientists warn the number of infected is still too low to establish 'herd immunity'
Coronavirus may kill 70 times fewer patients than official UK death figures suggest, studies have shown.
Britain has one of the worst COVID-19 testing records, meaning a frightening 13 per cent of diagnosed patients in the UK die from the disease.
But this is considerably higher than the real death rate because it does not take into account the thousands of infected people who had mild symptoms.
Scientists say the only way to work out the actual rate is to test blood samples of the population for antibodies, which the immune system makes once infected.
While the accuracy of these tests is up for debate, experts agree they give a much clearer indication of who has previously been infected - and are considered key to easing the draconian lockdowns imposed across the world.
Results of one antibody survey in Los Angeles suggested the illness may only kill around 0.18 per cent of coronavirus patients.
It was based on the assumption that the true number of infections in LA was 330,000, far higher than the 7,994 that official figures showed when the study was published on April 20.
This is because tens of thousands of people develop such mild symptoms that they are never tested for the illness.
Applying the same death rate to Britain's coronavirus crisis would suggest that the number of Brits who had caught the virus is in the region of 9.5million - or 14 per cent.
But Government advisers say the true number is likely to be a third of that, and some studies from France suggest it will only get up to 6 per cent in a matter of weeks.
Scientists say the only way to work out true coronavirus death rates is to test blood samples of the population for antibodies. Such studies have been carried out in the US, Germany, Holland and Finland (shown)
Official death rate are skewed by a lack of testing - the UK, for example, only checks people who are severely ill and some healthcare workers
A similar fatality rate (0.19 per cent) was found in a study of residents in Helsinki, Finland.
The samples were all taken from the region of Uusima, which is home to approximately 1.7million people - most of whom live in the capital of Helsinki. It found that 3.4 per cent of the population had antibodies.
At the time, only 2,000 cases had been confirmed by laboratory tests. But 3.4 per of the region's population would equate to around 57,800.
Only 110 deaths have been registered in Uusima to-date - suggesting that the true fatality rate is closer to the 0.19 per cent mark. By comparison, the flu kills roughly 0.1 per cent of the people it infects.
In other antibody surveillance studies, the death rate was revealed to be higher but still considerably less than the UK's tally.
Samples in Gangelt, dubbed the 'German Wuhan', estimated the true death rate was in the region of 0.37 per cent.
An antibody surveillance scheme in the US city of Chelsea, in Massachusetts, predicted the city has a death rate of 0.31 per cent.
And a sample in the Netherlands suggested the death rate for COVID-19 could actually be in the region of 0.63 per cent.
The varying death rates prove the true lethality of the disease is still unknown, but the antibody studies are starting to paint a clearer picture.
Dr Joe Grove, a virologist at University College London, told MailOnline: 'Antibody testing is important because the better we understand the virus, the better we can respond to it.
'The true death rate allows public health experts and epidemiologist to asses what the effects of another epidemic would be.
'A lot of our current policy has been determined by the predictions of computer simulations. But those models are only as good as the data you put into them.
'So there would’ve been estimates of death rates and infections, but as we get firmer numbers we can run more accurate simulations and predict with more confidence what might happen in future.
'This is critical for working out if given epidemic will overwhelm the healthcare system again.'
Another scientist - Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist from Sydney, Australia - said he was 'confused' at experts arguing COVID-19 had a death rate similar to the flu.
He tweeted: 'Currently, 14,800 people in New York have died. That's 0.18 per cent OF THE ENTIRE CITY. Unless 100 per cent are infected, it's not as low as 0.1-0.2 per cent.'
The new antibody studies are giving researchers a clearer idea of the actual number of infections in the population.
Even in the worst-hit regions, fewer than 10 per cent of the population have been infected.
This signals that countries should not pin their hopes on 'herd immunity' preventing a second wave of COVID-19, scientists say.
When enough of a population, roughly 60 to 70 per cent, build up antibodies against an infection, it stunts the virus' ability to spread.
Herd immunity was controversially touted as a way out of the crisis by the UK's scientific advisers at the beginning of the outbreak.
Officials proposed letting the majority of the population catch and beat the disease because the virus' symptoms in most people is mild.
The government based its planning on the assumption that if the virus was allowed to spread unchecked it would eventually infect 80 per cent of the population. That figure appears to have been borrowed from planning for flu pandemics.
But research is beginning to show that nowhere near enough people will catch the virus in the first wave to create the indirect community protection.
Research at the Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic, found that about 2.4 per cent of its employees and patients had developed antibodies against COVID-19.
In France, the Pasteur Institute estimates that less than 6 per cent will have been caught it by May 11, when the country's lockdown is due to end.
That makes a resurgence of the virus highly likely if restrictions were lifted without a vaccine, experts said.
Simon Cauchemez, lead author of the institute's study, said: 'For collective immunity to be effective in avoiding a second wave, we would have to have immunisation for 70 per cent of the population.
'We are well below this. If we want to avoid a major second wave, some measures will have to be maintained.'
Countries are moving towards antibody sampling to get a clearer idea of how the infection has spread and how many people may be immune to the disease.
They are considered the key to letting countries out of lockdown safely without a second wave of cases.
But British health chiefs have still only carried out fewer than 5,000 antibody tests - despite mass schemes being carried out across the globe.
Italy has begun screening the blood of 20,000 people a day, while one programme in the US will involve 40,000 healthcare workers.
Germany plans to test 15,000 people and apply the findings to its whole population, and even Andorra has ordered 150,000 kits - enough to give its entire population two each.
Antibodies are proteins in the blood which reveal if someone has already fought off an infection, including the deadly coronavirus.
Health chiefs have plans to conduct the 'biggest surveys in the world' to discover how many of the population have some sort of immunity to the virus.
But they are miles off the 5,000 per week target - Department of Health data shows only 600 were carried out at the Porton Down laboratory yesterday.
Officials promised Britons would be able to do antibody tests in the comfort of their own home in the near future, buying them from Amazon or Boots.
But officials claim the tests they have looked at are not accurate enough to be used, saying they range from between 50 and 70 per cent.
Experts stress the more people screened, the clearer the picture on the true size of the UK's crisis, which began spreading on British soil in February.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMijQFodHRwczovL3d3dy5kYWlseW1haWwuY28udWsvbmV3cy9hcnRpY2xlLTgyNDc0ODcvR292ZXJubWVudC1zZW5kLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXRlc3Rpbmcta2l0cy0yMC0wMDAtQnJpdGlzaC1ob3VzZWhvbGRzLXRyYWNlLXNwcmVhZC1kaXNlYXNlLmh0bWzSAZEBaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGFpbHltYWlsLmNvLnVrL25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZS04MjQ3NDg3L2FtcC9Hb3Zlcm5tZW50LXNlbmQtY29yb25hdmlydXMtdGVzdGluZy1raXRzLTIwLTAwMC1Ccml0aXNoLWhvdXNlaG9sZHMtdHJhY2Utc3ByZWFkLWRpc2Vhc2UuaHRtbA?oc=5
2020-04-23 10:20:41Z
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