Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the evidential basis is for the policy that (a) a positive covid-19 lateral flow test taken on a test site in a school or college does not require a PCR confirmation and (b) where a PCR confirmation test is taken and is negative that test is not able to override the positive lateral flow test result.

From the 30 March, a negative NHS Test and Trace administered confirmatory polymerase chain reaction test taken within two days of the initial, positive lateral flow device (LFD) test removes the legal duty to self-isolate. LFDs continue to have a very high specificity – the latest analysis shows lateral flow tests have a specificity of at least 99.9%. This means that for every 1,000 lateral flow tests there is fewer than one false positive.