Mass testing for asymptomatic Covid to be rolled out in NI

By Michael McHugh

Mass testing to detect people with asymptomatic Covid-19 is to be rolled out in Northern Ireland.

Sectors prioritised include agri-food, essential retail, manufacturing and construction.

Up to a third of those with the disease have no symptoms.

Matt Wills, head of mass testing in Northern Ireland, said: “New technology makes it possible to test at far greater frequency and pace.”

He added: “It is critical to ensuring the safe return to as normal a society as possible.”

The tests will screen workplaces providing critical services or those where employees cannot work from home.

Mr Wills said they were trying to have the greatest impact in the shortest period of time.

“We are trying to grasp the low-hanging fruit.”

Officials will later consider testing small retailers on the high street.

Lateral Flow Tests (LFTs) will be used.

Individuals with positive LFTs will have to isolate immediately along with their households.

They should then book a PCR swab test at their closest test site to confirm the result. Community contact tracing will be initiated on PCR confirmation.

Northern Ireland’s chief medical officer Dr Michael McBride said it represented a major step forward.

He added: “It is important that we do not drop our guard at this time.”

In the early stages of the pandemic, the severity of some outbreaks led to some workplaces being temporarily closed.

The rollout of workplace testing is intended to help prevent this by identifying asymptomatic positive cases and interrupting transmission of the virus.

Mr Swann said: “To emerge from lockdown we need to use every instrument at our disposal.

“We can test and find cases that would otherwise have gone undetected.

“This expansion of testing is another example of how we can rebuild our community.”

Mr Wills said they were working closely with central and local government to prioritise where to test.

People should be “reassured” that there is a “minimal chance” that tests being rolled out across schools and in the community will give false positive results, ministers in England have said.

The comments come after a new study suggested that LFTs – a key element of the Government’s Test and Trace programme which is aimed to track down people who have the virus but have not got symptoms – will provide less than one false positive result in every 1,000 tests taken.

There are two key assessments for whether diagnostic tools are working – sensitivity and specificity.

Sensitivity is the ability of a test to correctly identify patients with a disease, and specificity is the ability of a test to correctly identify people without the disease.

The Department of Health and Social Care said that the new analysis shows that lateral flow device tests (LFDs) to have a specificity of at least 99.9% when used to test in the community.

Lateral flow tests are quick turnaround tests, which can be performed without the need for laboratory assessment.