Antibody testing
Next week, the UK will begin offering antibody tests to health and care staff, eligible patients and care residents in England to see if they have had coronavirus, representing further progress in our national testing programme.
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Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria
Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Comments
there has also been mention of a rapid antigen test, to use in conjunction with the current antigen test, though again the results are taken nationally and inputted into a system (centrally) though this system is a completely seperate system from the one mentioned earlier.
so we have seperate databases processed by different people using different systems. Once things leave the systems we cant break them down again into anything that would be of any use at a local level, we cant even find out the results of the tests.
So in the end for all the testing (which is a good start, Im all for local test, trace and isolate, said so all along) but for all the current centrilised testing we see reports like this one from the Manchester evening news telling us that people are being tested "but we dont know who they are, where they work, we dont know what their results are"
Until we can move from a central management approach, which sadly seems to be outside of the thinking of Westminster, then I fear that the atempts of controling the virus will fail.
FWIW with the current social distancing rules in place (ones which people are following when you go to a shop or a garden centre) I dont think we will see the dreaded "second wave" (I've explained why I dont like that term) during the summer. I would expect now further outbreaks during the winter, when people tend to spend much more time indoors. Unfortunatly that will co-incide with the annual flu outbreaks.
Unless we get an effective and safe vaccine much earlier than could possible be taken for granted, a second wave at some point is certainly more likely than not.
It might be in summer, I think the Autumn is probably most likely, or it could come in the winter. I hope not for exactly the reason you point to.
Whenever it comes we have to be ready.