New report and 🧵: Evaluating the impacts of community testing using lateral flow antigen COVID-19 tests in the Liverpool City Region. liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/…
Did you know that between 3rd December 2020 and 31st July 2021 a whopping 668,243 people registered at least one lateral flow test! That's a lot of people
Liverpool was one of the first places to pilot using lateral flow antigen tests for asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 - the big question has always been could they be useful as a cheap way of catching cases early and preventing transmission?
Between 3rd December 2020 and 31st July 2021, we detected 28,712 positive tests via lateral flow tests - cases that might have not been caught as early otherwise
Did this matter? Well yes - we estimate that Liverpool's early adoption of lateral flow tests in the community led to 32% fewer hospitalisations relating to COVID-19 by the end of 2020 theguardian.com/world/2021/dec…
But not everything is good. There is lower uptake of testing among deprived communities, including confirmatory PCR tests, and it is these communities that were more likely to have tested positive over the period. We wrote about this previously: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
One good message here at least regards home testing - there were no inequalities by level of neighbourhood deprivation in the use of home tests (which account for more than 3/4s of all tests now). It suggests they have helped improve access to testing.
Linked to this, when considering confirmatory PCR tests for positive lateral flow tests - we find that home tests are similar to tests conducted elsewhere. It suggests that are a valuable source of information.
I would like to end by thanking everyone in the Liverpool City Region who got tested throughout the evaluation period. The success of our work is built from fantastic community engagement and Liverpool's commitment to lead the way as a city in the response to the pandemic.
I would also like to thank our incredible evaluation team who I have enjoyed working with closely. I have learnt a lot over the past year and have grown considerably over this experience. Thank you @profbuchan @benj_barr2 @FinanaMarta, @DPH_MAshton, Nina, Dimi, David and Chris.
Working on this project over the last year has been one of the best things I have worked on - it has led me to realise that this is the type of work I want to do more of. Policy led data analytics. That is my goal for 2022 and beyond.
Have a lovely winter break everyone and wishing you a lovely New Year.
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