Coronavirus

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, the progress on testing in social care is dramatic. The rollout of testing to all care homes is complete, and tests have been offered to all those who are symptomatic. The focus is very much on staff who travel between more than one home, and asymptomatic testing. As for the economy, all those who show symptoms can have a test, but we are talking to business about how businesses can also contribute to their own testing regimes, and we look forward to developing those plans.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, knowing who has and who has not had the virus is clearly essential in knowing who should be isolating themselves. The Minister has failed to answer my questions on what proportion of the self-testing kits are being returned, and on the estimated number of false negatives as a result of people not swabbing themselves properly or because of inherent weaknesses in the test itself. However, at the moment, NHS staff are being given antibody tests and many who have palpably had the virus and been exposed to it are showing as negative. What is the department’s working estimate of what proportion of false negatives there will be in those antibody tests?

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an important point. How it is that some people have palpably had the virus, as he rightly says, but do not show a positive antibody test, is a mystery that we do not fully understand. It seems that the tighter—more minimal—the amount of antibody left in the bloodstream, the less likely it is to register in the test. We are undertaking a massive antibody testing programme through the health service to understand this phenomenon more closely, and we look forward to publishing those results as a priority.