Pupils are forced to perform their OWN Covid tests at school as nurse watches on
Do you trust your child to do their OWN Covid tests? Pupils swab themselves at school as nurse watches on – despite proof rapid tests only work if they are administered properly
- Thousands of tests had been sent to schools ahead of the current lockdown
- Now only vulnerable children and who parents are key workers are allowed in
- Pupils are having to administer their own Covid tests as part of scheme
- It comes as calls to limit the number of children in school is growing nationwide
Pupils have been swabbing themselves as school nurses watch on despite proof rapid tests only work if they are administered properly.
Students at Oasis Academy in Coulsdon, Surrey, were sent the kits on Monday and given instructions by nurses on how to carry out the tests themselves.
Only vulnerable children or those whose parents are key workers are allowed to attend lessons in person during the latest national lockdown. It comes as figures suggest schools could still be attended by up to 20 per cent of pupils.
But children are now being supervised by nurses, similar to how some walk-in testing centres are run, rather than having a nurse carry out the tests themselves.
The idea is that fewer medical experts or volunteers are needed allowing a larger number of people to be test more quickly.
But multiple studies show lateral flow tests – when self-administered – could miss cases, due to the force and depth needed to collect a sample.
It comes as calls to limit the number of children in school is growing, with attendance levels surging to more than 50 per cent in some areas.
Student Molly Tinker takes a COVID-19 test at Oasis Academy in Coulsdon, Surrey, today
Student Ruby Soden receives instructions on how to self-administer her coronavirus test
Student Henry Parker receives instructions and equipment on how to take his virus test
Student Lily Mae Milliman takes her COVID-19 test using a mirror to assist in using the swab
After use the swab is placed into a reacting agent which shows whether the user has Covid
The tests were sent out to schools before they were shut down under the UK’s new lockdown
The tests, which give results in as little as 15 minutes, use swabs of the nose or throat.
Samples are then mixed in a testing liquid and put into a plastic cassette which can detect the presence or absence of coronavirus and then produce an image of a line, the same way as a pregnancy test, to indicate whether it is positive or negative.
Experts recommend a trained nurse or professional carries out the insertion of the swab to get to the necessary spot, which can be extremely uncomfortable.
Experts warned last year some self-tests are less accurate because they use shorter swabs and do not need to be inserted as deeply into the nose.
And in December a study in the British Medical Journal warned the rapid test kits were not as effective as others.
The findings of a pilot of 3,199 people blew a hole in the Government’s mass testing strategy, which featured plans to hand out millions of 30-minute tests to allow Britons to go back to living life normally.
The lateral flow tests produced by US-based Innova only pick up 48.89 per cent of active infections, according to a University of Liverpool pilot programme.
It contradicted earlier lab tests, which found the test had an overall sensitivity of 76.8 per cent, rising to 95 per cent in individuals with a high viral load.
It said the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test was more accurate and gained better detection results.
The BMJ report said: ‘The Innova Lateral Flow SARS-CoV-2 antigen test failed to detect three in 10 cases with the highest viral loads, in preliminary data released from the field evaluation of testing in asymptomatic people.’
Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said they did have a practical use and defended them.
There fears self-administered tests could miss cases, due to the depth needed to take swab
Professional use swabs are longer and when administered by a nurse can be painful
He said: ‘Even though it won’t detect as many infected individuals as the PCR test, it will identify those with the highest viral loads, and it’s those people who are most likely to go on to infect others.
‘It won’t replace other tests like PCR, but it is a useful additional tool for coronavirus control.’
Instructions for some of the tests say: ‘No force is needed and you do not have to push far into your nostril.’
However, professional-use swabs – which are much longer and are designed to take samples from the ‘floor’ of the nose – can make people gag, their eyes water or even trigger nosebleeds when carried out properly.
Infectious disease specialists say letting people do swabs themselves – notoriously difficult even for trained medics – makes false negatives more likely. False negatives mean people who are infected with the virus are wrongly told they’re in good health.
Infectious disease specialists say letting people do swabs makes false negatives more likely
John Murphy, CEO of Oasis Trust, said on Monday before the lockdown and general school closures: ‘What we know for sure is that our young people make the best progress with quality first teaching, with their teachers, in the classroom with their friends.
‘Therefore, once effectively delivered, we are assured that mass testing in schools will provide additional confidence to our children, parents, teachers and staff, and has the potential to greatly reduce disruption to learning, alongside our existing Covid controls.
‘In January we will be piloting the testing in a number of our schools before implementing this to all our secondary academies across the country.’
Schools were given comprehensive online training modules with 1,500 military personnel on hand to provide advice and guidance on establishing the process.
Britain’s current guidelines mean there is no rule to tell them to stay at home after a negative test, even if they have symptoms. Medics say Britain is out of step with other countries such as New Zealand – which contained its Covid-19 outbreak quickly, which place less importance on tests and do them multiple times.
Norwich-based researcher Dr Katherine Deane, branch equalities officer for the University and College Union, is worried about how effective infection control will be.
She told the Eastern Daily Press: ‘Schools don’t have experts in infection control, so the level of precision there will be on the set up, the cleaning of the area, the wearing of personal protective equipment and the ventilation is all worrying.
‘When you have a swab test, that tends to produce a cough – a gag reflex and the droplets go into the air.
‘The big ones will fall quickly, but the fine ones can stay in the air for up to an hour.
‘And yet, the idea of the testing is that you get a student swabbed, you clean up and five minutes later the next student is tested.
‘It means the volunteers supervising can be at higher risk of infection and, unless the infection control is meticulous, the venues run the risk of being the site of super-spreader events.’
Professor Jon Deeks, a biostatistics expert at the University of Birmingham, said: ‘A single negative test result doesn’t exclude the disease. You can so easily miss the virus – they give a lot of false negatives.’
Research suggests up to 30 per cent of professional swab tests return false negatives, meaning the number of positive cases may be underestimated by thousands.
It is not clear how inaccurate self-swabs are, even though they are being carried out more than 60,000 times a day in the UK. The Department of Health will not release data about the false negative rates of its tests.
The UK is spending more than £1billion on rapid coronavirus swab tests to try and achieve Operation Moonshot – an ambition of testing everyone in the country at least once per week.
In a TV briefing at the end of October Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: ‘We now have the immediate prospect of using many millions of cheap, reliable and above all rapid turnaround tests.
‘Tests that you can use yourself to tell whether or not you are infectious and get the result within ten to 15 minutes.
‘And we know from trial across the country in schools and hospitals that we can use these tests not just to locate infectious people but to drive down the disease.
‘And so over the next few days and weeks, we plan a steady but massive expansion in the deployment of these quick turnaround tests.’
He said they would be applied in ‘an ever-growing number of situations’ including in hospitals to testing ‘whole towns and even whole cities’.
But scientists warned the tests weren’t accurate enough for people to consider themselves Covid-free if they get a negative result.
Loughborough University’s Dr Duncan Robertson said in a series of tweets about the Liverpool report: ‘So… we have a mass testing regime that has large numbers of false negatives. The problem with this is that people may take tests, be told the test is negative, and then believe they are negative.
‘This can put vulnerable people at risk, and those in the communities in which they reside, such as residents in care homes.
‘The vital message is – if you have a negative test it does not mean you are not infectious or will not be infectious.’
Meanwhile calls to limit the number of children in school is growing, with attendance levels surging to more than 50 per cent in some areas.
Head teachers are in an ‘impossible position’ as they cannot allow all eligible pupils to attend while reducing ‘social mixing’.
Some schools have seen five-fold increases in demand for places from key worker families compared to the last lockdown. And pupils are in ‘super-size’ bubbles of up to 32 children, leaving staff ‘genuinely scared’ about the potential spread of Covid.
The Department for Education has widened the categories of vulnerable children who can still go to school and added more critical workers whose children can also attend. The already extensive key worker list now includes Brexit transition staff.
But last night the department updated its guidance to clarify that ‘children with at least one parent or carer who is a critical worker can go to school or college if required’.
However, these ‘parents and carers should keep their children at home if they can’. An accompanying DfE blog said: ‘If a child has a parent who is a critical worker, it is for the parent to decide whether they are able to keep the child at home. We encourage parents to consider the spirit of lockdown when making their decision.’
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) have called for urgent clarification on the ‘maximum’ number of pupils that can attend.
It comes as Independent Sage – a group of scientists who offer an alternative view to the Government’s advisers – yesterday said that underprivileged children are now at ‘risk of greater infection’ as they can attend lessons if they do not have access to digital devices at home.
It has recommended that the Government narrows the definition of key workers.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, said making ‘lack of internet access a vulnerable criteria’ has ‘only added to the numbers physically’ in classrooms.
Schools have experienced a much higher demand for places during this lockdown, with reports of some ‘having 50-70 per cent’ attendance levels.
This is an issue as schools aid the transmission of the virus. One in 27 secondary pupils and one in 39 primary pupils had Covid-19 on Christmas Day, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Mr Whiteman added: ‘Schools have been put in an impossible position. They cannot meet the demand created by Government and reduce social mixing. We would urge the Government to be clear about how many pupils on-site is too many, if the virus is to be suppressed.’
Geoff Barton, general secretary of ASCL, said: ‘We are hearing reports that attendance in some primary schools is in excess of 50 per cent because of demand from critical workers and families with children classed as vulnerable under criteria which has been significantly widened. We are urgently seeking clarification about the maximum number who should be in school.’
Half of all pupils at Willerby Carr Lane Primary School in the East Riding of Yorkshire are still attending lessons. Some 187 children turned up for class on Wednesday in ‘super-size’ bubbles ranging in size from 25 to 32 pupils.
Invicta Primary School in Deptford, south-east London, has five times as many pupils still attending compared to the last lockdown.