[pip08456]

Originally Posted by jfman

On the contrary - it makes them more essential to managing the response. Not less.

And that is to manage the response to what?

Lead author Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, said: "These tests work a lot less well in people who are asymptomatic than symptomatic. The government has not been clear on this.

"The only data we have is based on the [Liverpool and Birmingham] studies, where a total of 78 people had COVID-19, when 40 million tests have been given out.

"I personally find it quite shocking that the government thinks this is an adequate evidence base on which to base such a large, expensive, and quite invasive policy."

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...place-12266517

There's also this.

Richard Tedder, senior research investigator in medical virology at Imperial College London, commented, “This assay is simply not sensitive enough to use to test persons with a view to confirming an absence of infection and thereby an absence of infectivity. A negative result with this lateral flow test simply does not infer an absence of infection.”

The findings contrast with an earlier assessment of the Innova test by Public Health England’s Porton Down laboratory and the University of Oxford, which found an overall sensitivity of 76.8% but showed that sensitivity dropped to 58% when carried out by self-trained staff at a Boots track-and-trace centre.

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4848