Mon 03 August 2020:
Millions of COVID-19 tests able to detect the virus within 90 minutes will be rolled out to British hospitals, care homes and laboratories to boost capacity in the coming months, the country’s health minister said on Monday.
The “on-the-spot” swab and DNA tests will help distinguish between Covid-19 and other seasonal illnesses, the government said.
The health secretary said this would be “hugely beneficial” over the winter.
Currently, three quarters of test results are returned within 24 hours and a quarter can take up to two days.
The announcement comes as the government pushed back a July target to regularly test care home staff and residents, saying the number of testing kits had become more limited.
Almost half a million of the new rapid swab tests, called LamPORE, will be available from next week in adult care settings and laboratories, with millions more due to be rolled out later in the year.
Britain’s healthcare system has come under severe strain during peaks in the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, which has killed more than 46,000 people, the fourth highest toll in the world, according to a Reuters tally collated on Sunday.
Coronavirus tests are currently carried out at drive-through or walk-in sites as well as at hospitals for patients and some NHS workers.
Home testing kits can also be delivered to someone’s door so that people can test themselves. Swab samples are analysed at a laboratory before the result is passed on to the individual.
Unlike other seasonal illnesses, those infected with Covid-19 are required to self-isolate for 10 days.
Meanwhile, researchers are urgently appealing for recovered patients to donate their blood plasma – as part of a major trial looking at how effective transfusing blood plasma into patients struggling to develop their own immune response to Covid-19 could be.
