judicial review<\/a> for failing to publish covid-19 contracts, brought by your fellow MPs Debbie Abrahams, Layla Moran and Caroline Lucas with the Good Law Project.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is currently no evidence demonstrating that SARS-CoV-2 screening can bring benefit cost-efficiently, and experience shows that unless screening is delivered as a systematic programme with quality assurance for every step of the pathway then any theoretical benefit will not be realised in practice, even where a benefit is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We would like to ask you what has been decided, and how were decisions reached, regarding the types of tests to be used, what exactly are they aiming to detect, and how has their accuracy been evaluated? We understand that the Liverpool pilot is likely to use a direct LAMP test (Optigene) and a lateral flow assay (Innova). Currently there is little or no evidence of the accuracy of either of these tests from their use in presymptomatic and asymptomatic cases, or in field settings. There is substantial uncertainty as to whether they can detect the lower viral loads that are likely in symptomless people, which appears to be the aim of this mass pilot. If the tests fail to detect cases, then the programme will waste resources and time, and give people false reassurance which could increase transmission. Similarly, the false positive rates of these tests have not been established in community use and neither have the implications for contact tracing services. Evaluations of other similar tests by the WHO has suggested between 1% and 5% of people without infection may get false positive findings. This means that if 1 in 100 people tested in the pilot have asymptomatic infections, as few as 1 in 5 of those getting positive results will actually have Covid-19 \u2013 and 4 out of 5 would be false positives and they and their contacts would unnecessarily be told to isolate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The accuracy of tests for identifying symptomless infection in a healthy population need to be evaluated in a pilot study with proper research design to assess the extent to which asymptomatic people contribute to overall case-loads, whether they play a significant role in transmission, and whether screening can help. We see no evidence that the Liverpool project has such a research design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It appears unclear what will happen when people test positive, and negative, whether there will be clinical oversight in interpretation of the results and whether the results will be sent to patients\u2019 GPs and integrated with medical records. What will people be offered? What will they be instructed to do? What support structures are in place to achieve this? It is also unclear how this programme will be integrated into, and affect, the track and trace system, which is already performing poorly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Are all the above considerations documented in a format suitable for the lay public to understand as part of an opt-in informed consent process? Is there an option to withdraw from the scheme at any stage, including freeing people of any study requirements? Are participants afforded the right to access their information, to know with whom it is being shared, and to request its deletion – in line with GDPR and the Data Protection Act?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are just some of the questions and issues that are concerning us and that need to be pursued, along with asking the government to explain why they are acting inconsistently with SAGE\u2019s advice. We urge you to do so as soon as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yours sincerely<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Allyson Pollock
Professor of Public Health, Newcastle University<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anthony J Brooks
Professor of Genomics and Bioinformatics, Leicester University<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Louisa Harding-Edgar
General Practitioner and Academic Fellow in General Practice, Glasgow University<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Angela E Raffle
Consultant in Public Health, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Public Health, University of Bristol<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stuart Hogarth
Lecturer, University of Cambridge<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Response from Kim Johnson MP<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nDear Allyson<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank you for your e-mail. The testing pilot in Liverpool is a matter between the Government and the local authority, so I am unable to answer your questions. I have, however, passed this across to our Director of Public Health who may well have the information you seek on what is a pilot project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kind regards,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kim<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kim Johnson MP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paula Barker MP, WavertreeIan Byrne MP, Liverpool West DerbyDan Carden MP, WaltonMaria Eagle MP, Garston and HalewoodKim Johnson MP, Liverpool Riverside [Responses below] 05 November 2020 Asymptomatic covid-19 screening in Liverpool We are writing to you in response to the apparently hurried decision to begin population-wide testing in Liverpool, as part of the \u00a3100 + […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[154,153,158],"class_list":["post-3345","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-testing-sars-cov-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allysonpollock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}