Minuscule testing for NHS staff as Tories continue to squander capacity on patients in ICU, contrary to expert advice
The government has boasted that it has now tested ‘over 2000’ NHS staff for the coronavirus – just 0.15% of NHS workers.
99.85% of staff have not been tested – and Tory minister Robert Jenrick made it clear this morning that the UK’s capacity is being used to test ‘critically ill patients’:
Medical experts say tests of hospitalised patients are a waste of capacity – critically-ill patients can be seen to have the virus from the symptoms they are manifesting and need to be treated accordingly – and say that capacity should be focused on ‘well’ staff.
An Italian study has shown that 50-75% of people spreading the virus at any given time have no symptoms, making ‘well’ staff a key vector for infection, especially when they still have little effective personal protective equipment – yet the government is boasting about its minuscule level of staff testing, while directing most of what its unpreparedness has made available in the wrong area.
Last month, Boris Johnson said the UK would ‘rapidly’ have capacity for 250,000 coronavirus tests a day. That was downgraded this week to 25,000 a day – and only hopefully by the end of April.
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This is a genuine question:
How come all the testing kits are being issued by politicians? Surely they are in the hands of doctors and consultants and they can just use them as they need?
Is there a civil servant sat in each hospital holding a box of testing kits and only signing them out if a doctor signs a gagging form and statement to only test already obviously ill people?
Can you use twitter to tell those said same doctors to just seize all the kits and use them in the appropriate manner?
Mark there is no civil servant sitting in each hospital or ANYWHERE tests kits are needed. There is a SPECTACULAR lack of test kits at ALL points of need. The noises of the government are misleading.
The government’s political choice was to allow the deadly virus to spread through the population to create “herd immunity.” They assumed it would be believed that they were “being guided by science”. They were NOT guided by POSITIVE SOUND science. Tory “science” is sinister. Sound science is logical. With an “unknown” KILLER CONTAGIOUS virus, the only sound way to achieve herd immunity, is with a vaccine. Until then, you test test test, trace trace, isolate, and screen at travel hubs especially one of the busiest international travel hubs London Heathrow LHR. I would go further every single passenger from cruises in the previous three weeks by air from foreign ports or at ports here eg Southampton 🌹🌹🌹
Not testing frontline staff and at the same time giving them masks with big holes in them (exhale valves) so they can infect every patient they treat doesn’t make strategic sense – the unnecessary deaths will mostly be among older patients so the Tories are killing off their own support base.
Savings on pensions and NHS are no use to them in opposition.
I thought Cumminge was supposed to be smart?
Cummings is smart , smart enough to run away from the cameras the other day , when suppoosidly he has CV type symptoms . Hope it fucking kills him even IF it really is CV19 .
The bug killing him would be a bit unfair on all of us…
How about it leaving him with permanent complications whereas he’s left with certain disabilites…And then let’s see the fucker gettin found fit for work and sent to shovel shit for his benefits.
And let’s see if he’d retain his eugenicist views then…
The only government I know of in the world that has run away. Well, we already knew they were spineless cowards!
Propoganda works the ,the public isolated in blissful ignorance of what they are receiving and will have to endure.for an ideological experiment with NO comeback.We were in isolation they will claim,but then again the public will believe almost anything and will vote for a Homicidal public schoolboy….Funny old world ?.,..innit regards comrades on the day a establishment Knight rises in all his splendour to transform the democratic socialist Labour party in his own image for the establishment
BloJob’s had another flash of genius today – he’s announced that testing is important.
If only someone had thought of that before.
Uh-oh. I might have just broken wordpress in my impatience at the time it was taking to log in. The Post Comment and Notify me clickybits at the bottom are dodging around now, trying to stop me posting.
I’m goin’ in…
I reckon a lot of the new CV19 “blameless” UC claimants will kick off at the five week wait when they’re the ones doing the waiting.
They’ll have thought it was a great idea when it was only happening to the “lazy & shiftless” – the ones who in the minds of S*n readers like them “brought their poverty on themselves by not getting on their bikes.”
The new contemptibles won’t like it up’em.