Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help ensure that health and social care staff continue to have access to free covid-19 testing.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
From 1 April 2023, the Government implemented changes to COVID-19 testing. These changes aligned COVID-19 more closely with the management of other respiratory infections. As part of this change, routine symptomatic testing of staff in high-risk settings ended. Staff testing has continued in a limited number of the most high-risk settings to protect particularly vulnerable people. This includes hospice staff with symptoms and some National Health Service staff with symptoms, working on inpatient wards with severely immunosuppressed patients. Information on testing in these settings is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-19-testing-during-periods-of-low-prevalence
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many pharmacies have bought coded stamped lateral flow tests for collection by immunocompromised patients from 17 November.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The NHS Lateral Flow Device (LFD) tests supply service for patients potentially eligible for COVID-19 treatments was launched on 6 November 2023. Information about how many pharmacies have supplied LFD tests will not be available until pharmacies have claimed for the delivery of the service.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Government's figures on covid-19 cases in the UK, whether that figure includes results from all types of covid-19 testing kits.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The ‘Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK’ dashboard provides a summary of key information about the pandemic. This includes levels of infections, the impact on health in the United Kingdom and on measures taken to respond. The UK Health Security Agency also publishes the National Influenza and COVID-19 Report which includes the number of episodes of infection and test positivity over time.
Case numbers include results from Pillar 1 (polymerase chain reaction) testing, which represents tests undertaken for healthcare purposes and in public health laboratories. They also include results from people who have reported a positive lateral flow test from the National Health Service on GOV.UK. Lateral flow tests that are privately purchased cannot currently be registered on GOV.UK
Changes to testing policies over time affect surveillance data. Fewer tests being performed, and tests limited to certain settings, would need to be considered when interpreting surveillance data. Nonetheless, surveillance metrics based on current testing continue to provide useful indicators of recent trends and disease acuity.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to ensure that results from privately purchased rapid lateral flow tests for Covid-19 can be reported on the Gov.uk website.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Lateral flow device (LFD) tests which are privately purchased cannot currently be registered on GOV.UK and there is no requirement to report these results to the provider. There are currently no plans to change the policy on reporting private COVID-19 test results.
For citizens that are eligible to order free LFD tests from the UK Health Security Agency, these tests can still be registered on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the UK Health Security Agency’s observation that “in the UK, the current surveillance systems do not support an assessment of comparative severity between variants”, published on 14 September; and what plans they have to increase PCR testing and COVID-19 surveillance in England.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Trends in disease severity and outcomes can be monitored over time through hospital data. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) receives vital data from those who are admitted to hospital with symptoms, and UKHSA is using genome sequencing to detect and assess severity and vaccine effectiveness against new variants.
While reduced polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing in the community limits comparisons of variant severity, surveillance metrics based on current testing continue to provide useful indicators of recent trends.
UKHSA retains laboratory capacity and an ability to scale PCR and lateral flow device testing back up should it be needed.
Planning for the restart of community surveillance for the winter season, when health pressures usually rise, is in progress. A national surveillance report is published every two weeks, and this will increase to once every week in the winter season.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government (1) what plans they have to monitor the development of the BA.2.86 COVID-19 variant in the UK; and (2) to what extent PCR testing will support monitoring the BA.2.86 COVID-19 variant.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UK Health Security Agency conducts routine monitoring and surveillance of COVID-19 and the emergence and spread of new variants internationally via a range of surveillance systems and genomics capabilities, which report infection rates, hospitalisations and the risks posed by new variants, including the BA.2.86 variant.
The Government has maintained essential COVID-19 surveillance activities in primary and secondary care, and in high-risk settings. Currently a technical briefing is published every week, reviewing the data and risk assessing BA.2.86 and other variants.
We use Polymerase Chain Reaction testing for genomic sequencing to monitor and detect and assess vaccine effectiveness against new variants.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following the detection of the BA.2.86 COVID-19 variant in the UK, what assessment they have made of COVID-19 PCR testing (1) capacity, and (2) availability in England.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Appropriate levels of testing for COVID-19, including polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing have remained to support diagnosis for clinical care and treatment, and to protect very high-risk individuals and settings.
Lateral flow device (LFD) testing is predominantly used and continues to be effective in detecting positive results, including of new variants. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) currently holds a stock of LFDs to support current testing policy and enable expanded deployment, should cases rise or risks to the National Health Service increase.
UKHSA continues to monitor prevalence and other factors to determine if additional testing, either LFD or PCR, is needed.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the unavailability of testing kits free of charge on the accuracy of national Covid-19 surveillance reports.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The data in the national COVID-19 and flu surveillance reports are accurate based on the data reported to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
The changes in the availability of free COVID-19 testing have not affected the accuracy of data presented within UKHSA’s national COVID-19 and flu surveillance reports. Changes to testing policies over time have changed the volume and breadth of data included in the reports, and this needs to be considered when interpreting that information.
However, there continues to be a range of useful and accurate data available within the national COVID-19 and flu surveillance reports taken from other sources, including our ongoing surveillance programmes.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the covid-19 wastewater testing programme in England on monitoring the rate of infection.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Wastewater monitoring for COVID-19 and its variants was stood down in April 2022 in response to the Government policy change to Living with COVID-19. Therefore, in England, there has been no wastewater testing for COVID-19 within the last 12 months.
Wastewater sampling, and subsequent analysis, has the benefit of detecting the virus regardless of whether people have symptoms or whether they are tested.
Environmental factors such as rainfall dilution can influence the detection of variants in wastewater. Therefore, low total detections on some days may not be reflective of low community infection levels.
Wastewater monitoring cannot currently estimate the number of cases associated with a detection with a high degree of confidence. For example, in small catchment areas it is possible, but highly unlikely, that a detection is due to a single individual. In larger catchment areas detections are likely to be related to a higher number of cases in the population.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much free covid-19 rapid lateral flow tests provided by the NHS for people who work in healthcare or adult social care costed in each month since 1 April 2022.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We are unable to provide the information requested as it is commercially sensitive.