Thread by @faisalislam

“Sent to satellite testing locations” sounds like a reference to the care home pilot announced here earlier this week... gov.uk/government/new…

My colleague @BBCHughPym reports that Government has included tests sent out to those who booked online but not actually completed, Govt sources told him it is the only way to count them as it’s hard to track them when swabs are sent back to the labs...

Here’s how Germans count and detail their 2,547,052 tests, via an online network of 174 labs all feeding into the Robert Koch Institute who report the weekly completed tests, and the percentage positive...

Ie they are counted after assessment in a lab for whether positive or not

Worth noting Germans also count tests rather than people

@RKI_de also publish this table on total test capacity of its labs - 141,815 per day, or 860,494 per week...

Although UK’s 122k, might sound close, German number is lab test capacity, not uncompleted test kits sent out

take cumulative increase in tests done this week - its gone from 720k on Monday morn to 1.023m... strip out 40k test kits that sent out not yet lab processed... its 263k lab tests so far this week - including Friday, numbers starting to reach German weekly levels seen in March...

Getting testing into orbit of German weekly levels (tho they have now pushed it further) is really impressive in and of itself (without including not yet lab processed tests), stretch target of 100k obv played part as test tsar explains below/how...

healthmedia.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/30/a-t…

So breakdown of 122k is:

39,753 “pillar 1” tests at PHE labs
39,153 “pillar 2” “in person” tests at other labs
40,369 home swab kits P2 “delivery route” Amazon/ Royal Mail (27k to individuals, 13k to institutions - care homes etc, not yet processed)
3,072 p4 antibody tests

Pillar 2 column now shows different stats pattern - relationship between “Tests” and “People tested” is now v different - almost double the number of tests vs people. And makes the “positive” results difficult to interpret - less prevalence in P2? OR tests not yet actually done?

So Government could have said - we completed 80k lab tests, and have 40k in the field thru an amazing logistical effort due to be collected within 48 hrs - met our ambitions...

Interested tho in why that 40k incl as done “test” which might be “positive” when not done yet

Probably worth reiterating - 80k number of actual tests yielding a result from a lab determining today whether or not a person has the virus... is really quite impressive, and if sustained, puts UK in same testing orbit as Germany. 👏🏽

But for those interested one why such systems weren’t in place ahead of the peak of the virus - this from the top German expert, who pioneered its test, and shared it with UK, is fascinating:

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1255614834282041347?s=21

testing numbers fell sharply, below 100k to 76k - might expect that at weekend. But pattern of Pillar 2 non PHE lab tests changed intriguingly too.

On Friday (Table 1) ratio of Pillar 2 tests to people was huge: 183%... vs 143% cumulative.
Today (Table 2) back at 136%...??

That is to say today in daily figures, the difference between number of tests & people tested (under pillar 2) was 36%, which is in line with the cumulative numbers for pillar 2 and total. On Friday was 83% - closer to double.
Interesting to see the data for individual days...

By all accounts - a whole load of new testing joint venture facilities are about to come on stream though, so not so sure that the numbers will stay below 100k, as others suggest. Obviously depends on demand though.

Today’s data is on the left, and Friday’s on the right... any screenshots of yesterday’s or earlier this week would be interesting...

Today’s number makes the average number of tests delivered (though not necessarily “done”) to 101k in 3 days since target deadline.

If tomorrow’s number is below 95,220, the average in the 4 days since target date will go below 100k...

85,000 tests reported today... big picture still a significant improvement on a month ago, but average in four days since target day has now dipped below 100k to 97,438.

Expect that to go back up though as more mass testing comes on stream though, assuming demand is there...

Nb number of tests hasn’t gone back up over 100k - indeed looks like an outlier now on 2 days.... also relationship between number of tests & people tested in wider non nhs labs (pillar 2) is now back down to 1:1 rather than double as they were on test day... mailed tests now 5k

Also today’s 6,111 new infections look like spike up... only been above 6k on one day in early April (when v little non NHS testing)... and on 2 days of/after the 100k deadline.

But there are same number of positive cases from 69k tests today as from 122k tests on April 30...

Also non NHS testing number of new cases (orange bar) was at 4k for the first time today (as NHS cases decline) - pretty important to know who, where and why these people are getting infected during a lockdown - care homes? Prisons?...