Few points on this thread in relation to the Liverpool mass testing pilot and what that has meant for the city itself

This is a very different to the issue of the government's plans going forward... https://twitter.com/deeksj/status/1334426403425685504

Firstly, as has been said consistently, the pilot in Liverpool has been a pilot with the aim of finding out important information like Jon is pointing out here - which does raise concerns about how accurate the tests are when thinking about rolling this out widely

It was carried out during a national lockdown for this very reason - because people would not be mixing or having contact during that time anyway

Severe restrictions were still in place and we are still under measures that don't allow indoor mixing etc

Local health chiefs have been clear throughout that a negative Lateral Flow test is not a licence to go and do whatever you want - even with a negative test you still have to adhered to the restrictions and the wider hands, face, space rules

It is a new test so obviously not enough is known about it and it would have been pretty irresponsible to suggest a negative test gave people carte blanche - it didn't and they couldn't anyway

For Liverpool, this has obviously been a really good opportunity and the LF testing has located 1,000 positive cases so far

At even 50% accuracy level that is 500 people who wouldn't have known they had the virus who knew they needed to isolate and cut those transmission chains

And crucially, for those that have potentially wrongly been told they were negative, we were still all under strict restrictions and guidance so there was no suggestion they should go mixing with others and potentially spreading it

However, as you can see from these results, there are rightly concerns that once things open up more a negative LF test will be seen as a sort of freedom pass for people, which it clearly isn't - the accuracy isn't there (although told more recent Liverpool results are better)

Of course the big worry here as Jon points out is about care home visiting - the accuracy levels are just not good enough to suggest a negative LF test is safe for someone to visit a vulnerable person and have contact etc

The new Liverpool pilot test for care home visiting involves two LF tests, a PCR test and must still wear PPE during the visit with no hugging - so that shows you how they feel about the risks still involved

Anyway those are some thoughts having spoken to those running the pilot in Liverpool - this was always supposed to be a learning exercise with the advantage of locating more hidden cases in the city along the way (which it did)

But it's pretty clear from the results that mass Lateral Flow testing on its own is not going to be enough to safely open large parts of society again (ENDS)