February 15, 2022

expert reaction to media reports suggesting ministers are considering ending free PCR testing in future, apart from for people in hospitals and high-risk settings, and for vulnerable people

There have been several media reports suggesting that new measures could see the phasing-out of free COVID-19 testing.

Dr Julian Tang, Honorary Associate Professor/Clinical Virologist, Respiratory Sciences, University of Leicester, said:

“This latest reported move is understandable from the government’s viewpoint as part of ‘learning to live with COVID’ – moving towards a more seasonal flu-like model – but there are some potential problems with this:

– for seasonal flu, we have well-established sentinel GP and hospital surveillance systems to track the emergence of new flu variants.  This is also likely being set up for COVID-19 – requiring ongoing PCR testing and viral sequencing for ‘sentinel’ cases at selected ‘sentinel’ sites – but will not necessarily give an accurate incidence across all regions.  But maybe we will not need that level of detail any more.

– for seasonal flu, we have well-established antivirals (oseltamivir, zanamivir) that are safe enough to be prescribed empirically during the peak of the flu season – when patients can be discharged home from A&E to finish the treatment course at home, without even the need to even test first – to prevent severe flu from developing.  We don’t yet have such well-tried and tested antivirals for COVID-19.

– for seasonal flu, most people live OK with it – even though many may take time off work – without bothering with flu testing, treatment, self-isolation or vaccination.  We are not yet at this stage with COVID-19 – and there is a lot of discomfort with removing all pandemic restrictions, social distancing, masking, testing, self-isolation mandates – particularly in the most vulnerable.

“So ideally, from a purely virological standpoint, most of us would like to see daily COVID-19 cases drop much lower – say under 10,000 cases/day (realistically this may not reach much lower than this, given the waning of immunity over time and the immune-escape capability of Omicron) – before these measures are all dropped completely.”

Prof Lawrence Young, Virologist and Professor of Molecular Oncology, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, said:

“Living with covid doesn’t mean ignoring the virus and letting our guard down.  We still have high levels of infection in the UK and the pandemic continues to rage across the globe.  We need to find a new normal where we maximise our freedoms while recognising that covid will always be present rather than trying to return to a pre-pandemic world where covid doesn’t exist.  As long as the virus continues to spread and replicate, particularly in populations who are under-vaccinated, it will throw up new variants and these will remain a continual threat even to those countries with high rates of vaccination.  Reducing the use of PCR will compromise our capacity to detect these new variants.  This is a critical issue particularly as we start to see a decline in omicron BA.1 infection.  The rise in infection rates with the BA.2 version of omicron highlights the need to maintain PCR testing and genomic surveillance.  It is inevitable that we will experience new variants over the coming months and these can only be monitored and traced using PCR coupled with virus genome sequencing.

“We need to remain vigilant, maintain our test and trace capacity and do everything to protect those who are most vulnerable.  You can’t control virus infection if you don’t know where the virus is spreading.  This means planning for future surges of infection by ensuring we have the ability to rapidly detect outbreaks with targeted approaches to test, trace and isolate.  Key to this is maintaining free access to lateral flow tests for all those with symptoms.  The pandemic isn’t over and, if we’ve learnt anything over the last 2 years, it’s that the impact and future of covid-19 will remain unpredictable.”

Dr Jonathan Stoye, Group Leader, Retrovirus-Host Interactions Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, said:

“It sounds as though the government’s response to COVID is now being driven by politics and economics rather than being “driven by the science”.  Even though the pandemic may appear to be ending, it has not yet ended.  There are no guarantees that new, more pathogenic variants will not emerge.  Despite the successes of vaccination, many people are still at risk.  Any significant reduction in testing will jeopardize lives and compromise our ability to monitor the appearance of new variants.”

eg https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/14/uk-ministers-press-ahead-with-plan-to-wind-down-covid-testing

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/free-pcr-tests-end-in-26231149

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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