{"id":362,"date":"2020-06-05T08:08:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T07:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/?p=362"},"modified":"2020-07-15T15:56:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T14:56:27","slug":"testing-and-the-covid-19-strategy-the-need-to-change-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/testing-and-the-covid-19-strategy-the-need-to-change-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing and the COVID-19 strategy: the need to change the game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We wanted to respond this morning to the policy research paper:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/institute.global\/policy\/changing-game-testing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Changing the Game on Testing<\/a>\u00a0published by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/institute.global\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Institute for Global Change<\/a>. The key point of the paper is that a radical rethink of the government testing strategy is needed in order for the UK to actually become \u201cworld class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some of the key points that are directly aligned to the Testing for All mission are:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Incorporate any and all available lab capacity that is capable of being integrated<\/strong>. This is the purpose of the Testing for All technology platform, and at this time we have integrated three large private lab networks capable of &gt;20,000 antibody tests per day (including using their European group company capacity)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Test all quarantined individuals, and release those who are negative<\/strong>. We are working with our lab partners to enable same day antigen testing using both saliva and swab sampling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Provide COVID-19 innovation bonds<\/strong>. We would welcome some additional funding to build our special purpose logistics and supply chain platform that integrates small labs and suppliers into a special purpose COVID-19 network. This endorsement would help to bring credibility to what we are doing. There is a huge installed base of Abbott, Roche and Siemens CMIA machines that are not being used in COVID-19 testing, and specific funding is needed to repurpose this equipment from other areas of \u201cthe diagnostic economy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Distribute rapid on the spot antigen tests to businesses to inform and trigger Track and Trace<\/strong>. We believe that employers are critical to the ongoing testing efforts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roll out combination testing.<\/strong> Ie. using tests which are cheap and easy to distribute as screening tools and using high sensitivity\/specificity lab based tests for confirmatory testing. We have investigated using lateral flow antibody tests, with confirmatory tests using CMIA based antibody testing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Develop a communications campaign for the portfolio of testing<\/strong>. We would welcome a message that clarifies it is an employer\u2019s obligation to embed testing in their \u201cback to work\u201d and employee safeguarding policies<\/p>\n<p>Above all else we wish that the UK government would embrace private enterprise, such as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Testing for All<\/a>, and create the integration points from a regulatory, process and technical point of view to ultimately achieve the aim of Testing for All: to make testing accessible and affordable to UK workers. We need a fast process in order to assess and integrate organisations such as ours into the fabric of a new public\/private \u201cworld class\u201d testing program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We wanted to respond this morning to the policy research paper:\u00a0Changing the Game on Testing\u00a0published by the\u00a0Institute for Global Change. The key point of the paper is that a radical rethink of the government testing strategy is needed in order for the UK to actually become \u201cworld class.\u201d Some of the key points that are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[47,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":364,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions\/364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingforall.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}