In what was presented as a relaxation of testing requirements, but is in fact a withdrawal of service, the UKHSA has announced that as of January 11th confirmatory PCR tests will no longer be recommended – and thus unavailable – for those who test positive on a lateral flow test (LFT) without symptoms. MailOnline has more.
Confirmatory PCR tests will no longer be needed for people testing positive for Covid on a lateral flow test, health chiefs confirmed today.
Previous guidance to back up positive rapid tests with more accurate lab results will be removed from January 11th.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced the move amid sky-high case numbers across England.
The move will free up capacity in laboratories for PCR tests for those who have Covid symptoms.
People who receive a positive result on a lateral flow device (LFD) will be required to self-isolate immediately for seven days, without requiring PCR confirmation.
UKHSA said this is a temporary measure while Covid rates remain high across the UK.
Officials said that while levels of Covid are high, the “vast majority” of people with positive LFD results can be confident they have the virus.
They estimated the number of “false positives” results, where people without the virus get a positive LFD result, are as low as three in 10,000.
However with just under 1.5 million of LFD tests being conducted across the UK every day this could lead to thousands of people who don’t have Covid having to isolate.
People who have Covid symptoms, such as a high temperature, a new, continuous cough, or change in sense of taste and/or smell should still get a PCR test, UKHSA said.
UKHSA has said that LFTs are 80% effective at finding people with high viral loads of Covid. However, Professor Sheila Bird, a former programme leader of the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge, said the 80% figure is based on data from the Alpha and Delta waves. “For transparency, results for these Omicron-era dual-testing evaluations should be placed in the public domain at the earliest opportunity,” she said.
Anecdotally I have been told by several people that they tested positive on LFT but then subsequently tested negative on PCR. Some of them were symptomatic. They said the person on the phone at Test and Trace told them this was very common at the moment as the LFTs were cross-reacting with other viruses and producing false positives that the PCR test then overruled.
If this is the case – and I have no reason to doubt it – then despite the change being billed as a solution to the staffing crisis it will only make it worse as thousands of people have to isolate from LFT false positives for which no confirmatory PCR test is available.
Since mass testing of the healthy has clearly failed to contain the virus – with new figures from the ONS today showing that an estimated 6% of the country was infected at the end of December – and with so many protected via natural immunity and vaccination, and with Omicron so mild, the Government needs to end all mass testing without delay and limit testing to contexts, such as hospitals and care homes, where it is needed to diagnose illness and protect the vulnerable.
Stop Press: The Mail is reporting that the Government is set to scrap all pre-departure Covid traveller tests today in a boost for the tourism industry, while the airline industry is demanding the Government goes a step further and axes all travel tests. Good news – but is it not time to accept that mass testing no longer serves any useful purpose (if it ever did) and we need to end this expensive drag on our economy and lives?
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Good and good riddance to the Convict party.
Rona Medical Nazism imposed for no reason whatsoever to the benefit of the party-partying elite and their corrupt friends. All of them cashed in bar a few. Dead and injured stacked up, no one cares.
Green Fascism running rampant, about as anti-science and anti-reality as it gets. Many of the Convicts making money off that as well. Net zero which is a slogan for retards will demolish a modern state and rape and destroy Gaia.
Open borders and the great replacement, feeding Serco, which feeds too many of these corrupt elitist criminals.
Most of these idiots can’t tell me what a woman is.
Most of the Convict party should be in jail. They have done their best to destroy the UK along many vectors. The tyranny of Pharma-ment based on the propaganda of the ‘glorious revolution’ itself a Dutch takeover.
Bang on. Of course, Labour will make things even worse. Good. It has to get much worse – unbelievable, that that’s even possible – before it gets better. Only by many more people realising what’s actually going on can there be a revolt. The only way this gets fixed is by tearing down the entire system, and for that we need the masses. The worry, of course, is by then it’s too late. It looks to me like we’re royally f*cked.
A good post. The problem I find with opinion polls, they never indicate the potential turn out percentage. We are almost at the political and social nadir required to effect a great change, but I fear it will take an external push, perhaps a conflict, mercantile or military, to initiate this change.
If there was genuine political will all of that could be changed. It would take someone like Javier Milei to do the job. As Free Lemming pointed out it is going to have to get a lot worse before anything like that happens, and I agree that Labour will deliver on that score, but first the Tories have to be destroyed.
Milei is in Davos this week. Not a good look.
“ ………but first the Tories have to be destroyed”.
Yes, that is Conservatisms only hope of survival.
I see NF yet again blamed again for the demise of the Tories.
My family and friends voted for Brexit and no way would they trust Labour either, so I cannot see Labour winning back those seats in the NE or new gains in the Eastern Counties.
The pollsters have not taken into account the ‘new’ world where to speak your mind leads to cancellation and the loss of your job. Many will stay quiet, as they have to at work, or mislead the pollsters with a more ‘favoured’ response.
Who will care? What difference will it make?
The Tory left would block anything a new leader attempted that might win over swing voters. Their policy of central office candidate selection has been appalling, and now they are doomed.
I don’t think Labour will last past one term either. If recent by-elections tell us one thing it’s that voters are not switching to Labour, instead Tory voters have stayed home (and who can blame them). Labour will fare no better after 5 years messing things up.
We need a great reset, not the WEF one but on our terms. I hope Farage can spur on Reform and convince more Tory voters to vote for them, instead of splitting the vote to let Labour in.
Who cares. Team A, Team B.
So maybe the other set of prison guards are a little less friendly. Whatever.
A defeat like 1997?
It is to be hoped that it will be a great deal worse than that.
Who do they really think is going to vote for them? And why would anyone?
Now all we need is for no one to vote for labour in 5 years time either. ——Both of these bags of s..t party’s need wiped off the planet and they can take their NET ZERO crap with them.
The headline was music to my ears! As a lifelong Conservative I have watched this country slowly disintegrate under this CONservative government. We’ve been bumping along at ground zero, now its time to dump this ‘Woke’ nonsense and if it means Liebor win then so be it, it will be the catalyst to getting people off their backsides and onto the streets. We need a Rebellion!
All because of a Birthday Cake. ———The tories were sitting there with an 80 seat majority and everything was rosy in the garden and then along came the VIRUS (Drum Roll) ——–Well when I say everything was rosy, I mean in the sense that the Tories were riding high in the polls and had this huge majority. I am not suggesting everything in the country was rosy. Because it definitely was not. So along comes Birthdaycakegate or whatever it was called and that was the END. It was one of those moments where you realise “Oh no what I have I done”? There was no way back. The Tories gave the Liberal Media (BBC SKY NEWS etc) all the ammunition, and they took it all and fired it non stop day and night like we bombed Dortmund in 1945. The Tories were Blitzed and they now sit in their bunker below Berlin like Hitler with maps open still “hoping the war could still be won” despite the fact that he was surrounded and the war “was lost” ——–It is time for the cyanide capsules.
Deliberately losing the General Election has clearly been Sunak & Hunt’s policy all along.
Difficult not to agree. That is why they were piloted in to position. Davos Deviant plants.
As far as the DD’s are concerned it doesn’t matter what flavour is nominally in charge because they will still be running the show. In effect Bliar with Kneel as the mouthpiece.
Well there is good news hidden in Stop Press 2. jeremy Hunt is predicted to lose his seat.
He’ll just get shuffled to the House of Frauds. The Establishment looks after its own.
Or a job at the WEF – to really rub our noses in it.
The following letter was published in the DT yesterday:
“SIR – Rishi Sunak’s attempts to scare former Tory voters away from backing Reform UK at this year’s general election – for fear of letting Labour into government through the back door – are a waste of his breath (“‘A vote for anyone other than Conservatives is a vote to put Starmer in power’”, report, January 7).
We’ve heard it all before.
We were taken for granted by David Cameron; taken for fools by Theresa May, who was out of her depth; and, although it pains me to say so, deceived and grossly let down by the underperforming, pantomime PM that was Boris Johnson – a failed messiah if ever there was one.
All betrayed our trust with breathtaking displays of arrogance and downright dishonesty, which have left lifelong Conservatives and Leavers like me feeling exploited and abused.
There’s no reason to believe that Mr Sunak’s promises will be any more trustworthy than those of his three immediate predecessors. His pleas will not stop us voting for Reform UK, whatever the short-term cost may be. The day of retribution is upon us.
It’s time for this soulless and gutless shell of a once-great Conservative Party to be either dismantled and reconstructed or replaced – while Labour spends the next five years demonstrating its innate and ruinous incompetence to yet another starry-eyed generation of soon-to-be disappointed and disillusioned youngsters.
Adrian Barrett
Haywards Heath, West Sussex”
Well said that man.
A lot of it is a political illusion. Many real policies are managed by others, with limited influence by one party or another. If this is better understood, maybe the turnout will go down for the 2024 general – perhaps towards local council turnouts; we’ll see.
Yes we sometimes forget that Big Business and Central Banks that control the money supply along with the UN and WEF are the politicians bosses. They don’t work for us, they work for them.
From my view, I don’t see any reason to celebrate the Tories death spiral. The only outcome of it is a worsening of everything UK, some of which we may never be able to recover. Unfortunately it does appear like a period of Labour is going to be inevitable, and lord help all of us.
However, Labour have already painted themselves into a corner with their spending commitments. Apparently each £1 that is collected in VAT from Private Schools will magically multiply itself 5-10 time for the commitments they have given with the money. One benefit of the Tories having maxed us out on tax, is that Labour have few places to go for spending more than we are already, £17,000 of government spending, per man woman, whatever, and child in the country.
If I were a strategist for Mr Farage, I think I would be telling him to wait in the wings for this GE, then be the opposition voice to Labour, and hope to slip into power at the GE after this. If the Tories are crushed, and they will be, and the Liberals likewise, then Labour’s complete policy vacuum, delivered by their team of nonentities is bound to magnify Reform many times over. Labour are still relying on the ‘F*ck the Tory’ vote. But being in power is a lot harder than being in opposition.
Conservatives haven’t been since (at least) the ‘Heir to Blair’. A serious kicking is the only hope. We cleared out the Cons in our town council but all that did was let in assorted loons (vegan food at TC events but not the milk in the staff tea or when our French twin town visits) so there’s that (strong!) risk with GE.
I see the ex Mrs Michael Gove pushing the trope that a vote for Reform UK is a vote for Labour! Yet Labour are no more popular and will struggle to keep their traditional voters with mass immigration, nut zero, and rejoining the EU policies.
All they need is the SNP to announce more goodies for those in the public sector and those on benefits to keep all their inner city votes and Labour at best will be in a Coalition.
“….will add to pressure on Rishi Sunak to pivot to a far more conservative agenda”
I don’t know why the author added ‘far more’. There is nothing conservative about this government at all. Just a conservative agenda would be a start.
I really do not understand why any person is considering voting for Labour or the Lib Dems, but certainly not those who voted Leave.
If everyone who voted Leave, just this once voted for Reform or The Heritage Party (which as far as I’m concerned is far better than Reform UK, if you are going to vote for any party), that will surely get them lots of seats, if not outright victory. Alternatively, everyone spoils their ballot paper. They have to declare the numbers and to have 17+ million spoilt ballot papers will send a huge message.
I’m not voting for Reform UK. Their Net Zero Immigration policy will do nothing to address or halt the destruction of the British culture or way of life. It has to be qualified that for one person to come in, one non-indigenous Briton must have left. If an indigenous Briton emigrates, that doesn’t open a ‘vacancy’ to be filled. Ideally though, it should be 2,3 or more non-indigenous Britons to leave for every person allowed in. In addition, everyone granted British citizenship must assimilate and failure to do results in deportation. Anyone granted asylum who returns to the country they have allegedly fled from, must be stripped of their asylum status and be banned from returning to the UK. The only way to protect the British culture and way of life is to make sure that indigenous Britons (and those that truly want to be British) are the vast majority.
I couldn’t care less about party politics – it is now just one party anyway. Starmer, the Teflon leader, getting into power is the plan of course. People ‘out there’ think that the Tories are the real problem when it’s way beyond parties. We have puppets dancing on strings to their masters in the WHO, the WEF, the CFR and all the other non-elected bodies, frog-boiling us towards the ultimate goal of depopulation, control, surveillance…essentially Agenda 21 communitarianism (basically communism). Starmer’s getting hot and sweaty about how he will radically alter our lives. Picture his face as Big Brother. Can we stop him? Not unless our voices are heard in the media and that isn’t going to happen. Maybe it’s inevitable that we go through this. For myself, I will galvanise myself into more action, more speaking out, more non-compliance etc. I didn’t live my long life to be governed by lesser people like him.
Top class Aethelred. 👍
Cheers, HP! 🙂
I will be quite happy to see a Conservative wipeout but the thought of T. Bliar returning as ruler is enough to turn anyone’s stomach.
If the Tories remained in charge we would be facing more of the same and the Davos Deviants would be operating as they have for many years in the background. With Kneel as nominal PM the Davos Deviants will be more up front especially as Bliar hates this country and their destruction will become more blatant. This may just wake the sheep. The chances are remote but we can only hope.
And yet – the Tories are doing everything to secure their defeat and nothing to avoid it.
Stop immigration and start deportations.
Stop the Net Zero Crazy, stop loonie Council ULEZ/15 minute cities, frack, build coal fired power stations, get rid of windmills, and get Brexit ‘done’ properly and completely.
Stop funding losers in foreign wars.
Stop the woke nonsense.
In other words do their job, fulfil their duties to the British people not cronies and foreign interests.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/batten-down-the-hatches-a-financial-hurricane-is-on-the-way/
The West is facing total collapse.
Is Reform the Trojan Horse for Labour? Richard Tice is totally untrustworthy.
He is, and Farage gets a lot wrong, but if you want to smash the system you have to your cross somewhere.
The only really conservative party and the only leader with still intact credibility and integrity after Covid is Heritage and David Kuerten.
Tells one all there is to know that he/they can’t gain any traction but establishment vaccinators and MICIMATT-phile warmongerers Tice and Farage can.
Still, if the house can be brought down through them, bring it on.
Then, the UK will be ready for what it really needs: the Icahn/Milei treatment.
I agree, and Reform could become controlled opposition. I will vote for them anyway though, we need to bring the house down and see what happens after that.
The people currently in government are facing a wipeout. Those people are not Tories, tho.
They may call themselves Tories, but then the D in DPRK stands for Democratic. Just as it did in DDR.
Bring it, and the subsequent collapse of everything under Labour, on:
“It is in the collapse of the system where hope resides. As every aspect of the system is corrupt, collapse is the corrective. The ruling elites have miscalculated. By bringing about the collapse, the elites are collapsing their own power.
Collapse brings reset, not the World Economic Forum’s, but the peoples’ reset. The people have the numbers, not the elites, who are diminished by fights among themselves. As their power shrinks from their miscalculations, their power diminishes. The elites know this, which is why they are trying to kill us with “vaccines,” “pandemics,” and the destruction of our food supply in the name of “saving the planet from global warming.””
https://www.unz.com/proberts/there-is-hope-after-all/
Ghastly prospect, but Britain needs a conservative party and destroying this Conservative Party is a pre-requisite.
If Farage hadn’t betrayed people at the last GE mightn’t the collapse of the fake conservatives have happened then?
Remember January 1981. It’s surprising that nobody has mentioned what happened to the Labour Party then. Various novel parties could easily follow the same course as the SDP while the Tories resurrect themselves somehow.
I’ll be surprised if Sunak retains his seat and they get above 100 seats. The Conservative Party need to step down for Reform UK.
I think North Wales will turn green and not red. Most intensely dislike the Cardiff-centric south Wales welsh labour party.