Tag: Child safety

Roasted Test-Nuts: How to Save Christmas

December 14, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Perhaps, you’ve been avoiding the news as much as you can – and who can blame you? It seems to be just endless doom and gloom. You’re just trying to enjoy a Christmas season that you had hoped would mark an end to a terrible year. Of course, you know that isn’t true anymore but if we’re not careful, all of our hopes will seem dismally ironic by the time 2020 is done. 

So, what do you need to know? Well, the upshot is that infection rates are rising pretty uniformly across the country, although particularly in the South-East. The R-rate is not as menacing as it was before the lockdown but we’re hovering around 1, i.e. the threshold that both lockdowns were intended to stop us from going over. For small businesses, any rise in the R-rate in their zone is a problem, threatening a change in Tier which if you’re currently managing to stay open, will probably mean that you’ll have to close. Rumours about widespread changes to the status of a number of areas of the UK have been escalating. Seemingly, London is heading for Tier 3 with large segments of the South-East to follow. Apologies for the doomsday forecasts but it’s over now.

Although it might not seem that way, these projections are not set in stone. There is a simple way to help prevent closures and further lockdowns: widespread rapid testing.

Recently, Public Health England have certified a number of rapid tests. To receive accreditation, these tests have to meet world-leading standards. This means exceptionally high levels of reliability.

It must be reiterated that the exceptional reliability of these rapid tests does not mean that they perform the same function as other tests for COVID-19. For example, the tests you will receive from the NHS are PCR tests. These tests are the gold-standard for identifying traces of COVID-19 in the body. However, a certain amount of viral material must be present in the body before a person can spread the disease. Government-accredited rapid tests reliably identify if such an amount is present. 

In the PHE’s evaluation, Sir John Bell, Regis Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, said of these tests: “They identify those who are likely to spread the disease and when used systematically in mass testing could reduce transmission by 90%.”

They could reduce transmission by 90%. What might that do for our Christmases, all of us who have to weigh up the risks of spending time with family that we might not have been able to see, let alone hug, for nearly a year now? Monitoring yourself and those you hope to spend time with this Christmas with rapid tests is the best – and increasingly it looks like it may be the only – way to save Christmas and wave an eager goodbye to a terrible year. 

If you are interested in rapid tests for yourself or your workplace, take a look at our online shop, where you’ll find our range of rapid tests which are on the path to accreditation.

How To Prevent Another Lockdown

September 21, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Over the last few weeks, primary and secondary schools have been reopening. In the coming weeks, many teenagers will also go off to universities. It has been estimated that three children in a thousand will walk into the classroom with COVID-19. And no one will know until the school has to be closed on account of an outbreak.

This is a risk that affects your children. And in turn, this becomes a risk to many of the older people in their lives, including you and your loved ones.

Perhaps, as they have done so far, the government will continue to respond to these outbreaks with local lockdowns or increased restrictions on social gatherings outside of educational institutions. 

But what about prevention?

A rising number of immunologists have been excited to discover that rapid tests can provide precisely this.

A rapid test tells you whether you have COVID-19 in under 15 minutes and can be done by you at home. 

Simply, take a nasal swab. Place it in the test tube and add the buffer solution. Then, place the strip in the solution and wait 15 minutes for your results.

By testing yourself and your family regularly, you will be made aware of your infection-status as soon as possible, regardless of whether you have symptoms. It is precisely this capability which could make rapid testing one of the most effective tools that we have to mitigate the dangers of the COVID-19 virus.

But, I hear you say, rapid tests are inaccurate, right?

Well, think about it like this. Before you become infectious, you need to have a certain amount of viral material – that’s the stuff of the virus, all its replications – in your body. In other words, you need to pass a certain threshold before other people can catch the virus from you. 

Some researchers were worried about rapid testing because it couldn’t detect the smaller amounts of the virus, the amounts below that threshold. Soon, however, they realised that it reliably detected those amounts above the threshold. Put simply, if you’re infectious, a rapid test will give you a positive result.

So, a rapid test tells us exactly what we need to know. But the NHS already provides accurate tests, so why do we need rapid tests? 

You can probably guess the answer if you’ve already taken an NHS test: you have to wait at least 48 hours for your results. Even the new tests, lauded for their speed, take 90 minutes and require you to travel to an NHS drive-through centre. If you saw our last blog, you’ll also know that this system is crumbling. A rapid test, however, can be conducted wherever you are and delivers results in just 15 minutes. 

So, rapid testing is convenient, easy-to-use and gives precisely the results that we need. OK, but what am I asking you to do?

First, share this blog post with colleagues, friends and family members. Dispelling the myths and misconceptions around rapid testing is an essential first step.

Then, I urge you to use whatever influence you have to call on the government and the Prime Minister to consider daily rapid testing for all schools, colleges and universities in order to prevent further lockdowns and restrictions. We must act now to ensure the health and stability of Britain.

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