Asymptomatic testing should be wound down as the UK learns to live with the pandemic, one of the country’s top coronavirus experts said.
Sir Andrew Pollard, who helped develop the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, said just people who are unwell with Covid symptoms should be tested and treated.
As it stands, anyone who has a fever, has a new cough or has lost their sense of taste or smell can get a PCR tests.
And anyone can order free lateral flow tests to use at home.
NHS Test and Trace was given a £37billion budget for the first two years and had spent more than £4billion on lateral flow tests up to the end of March.
As Sir Pollard called for a shift in testing policy at All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Coronavirus, MPs also heard:
- Vaccine booster jabs may not be needed this autumn, as there is no evidence protection is waning;
- Herd immunity is ‘not a possibility’ with the current Delta variant, because it can still infect vaccinated people;
- Covid variants that can escape the protection given by vaccines are an ‘absolute inevitability’;
- Children who aren’t unwell shouldn’t have to self-isolate to curb the spread of Covid.
Sir Pollard, a coronavirus expert at the University of Oxford, said the country needs to move towards clinically-driven testing – when just those unwell with the virus are given a test. He said community testing – when lots of people who do not have symptoms are tested – should be wound down as the country learns to live with the virus
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 248.3million Covid tests have been taken, with around 700,000 conducted each day since January, costing billions of pounds
Sir Pollard today told the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Coronavirus that there should be a shift in the testing regime.
He said we need to work out ‘what does ‘learn to live with Covid’ mean?’
Sir Pollard added: ‘What does that mean in terms of the surveillance that we’re doing, the testing that we’re doing, and also how we should manage patients in hospital or even before hospital in their treatment to try and stop them getting into hospital?
‘I think this next six months is a really important consolidation phase and in that shift from the epidemic to the endemic, which is the ‘living with Covid.
‘That doesn’t mean that we live with it and put up with it, we still have to manage those cases of patients who become unwell with it.
‘Over time we need to be moving to clinically-driven testing as well where it’s people who are unwell who get tested and treated and managed, rather than lots of community testing in people who have very mild disease.’
The APPG was hearing evidence from experts on inoculating children, booster jabs and global access to vaccines.
Sir Pollard also told MPs that children who aren’t unwell shouldn’t have to self-isolate to curb the spread of Covid, one of the country’s top coronavirus experts said today.
Last term children in England had to self-isolate for 10 days if another pupil in their bubble – which can be an entire year group – tested positive for coronavirus.
The rules caused mayhem, with 1.13million children off school on a single day in July due to the virus.
Nine in 10 of these pupils were isolating due to being in contact with an Covid case, while the rest either had symptoms or tested positive.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said last month that the use of ‘bubbles’ will come to an end. From August 16, children in England will only need to self-isolate if they have tested positive.
Pupils contacted by Test and Trace as a contact of a positive case will be required to take a PCR test but they will only have to isolate if they themselves test positive.
It prompted concerns from some experts at the time, who criticised the approach.
Sir Pollard today told the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Coronavirus backed the move.
Sir Pollard said: ‘Given that children have relatively mild infection compared to adults… we probably should be moving to a situation where we’re clinically-driven.
‘If someone is unwell, they should be tested.
‘But for those contacts in the classroom, if they’re not unwell then it makes sense for them to be in school and being educated.’
He said clinically-driven testing should be the approach in the community as well.
He said: ‘Over time we need to be moving to clinically-driven testing as well where it’s people who are unwell who get tested and treated and managed, rather than lots of community testing in people who have very mild disease.’
It comes after a study by experts at Oxford University revealed daily testing of close contacts was just as effective as isolating for stopping the spread of Covid.
The study found fewer than one in 50 people who were close contacts of an infected person had Covid.
Sir Pollard added: ‘Anybody who has not been vaccinated will at some point meet the virus.
‘It might not be this week, this month or this year but they will meet the virus.’
He also said: ‘Herd immunity is not a possibility because it still infects vaccinated people.
‘I expect what it will throw up next is a variant even better at infecting vaccinated people.’
‘One of the strongest argument to vaccinate children is to protect adults. The vaccine doesn’t fully stop transmission, so doing that doesn’t protect adults.’
Scientists have said herd immunity is a myth, because while vaccines slash the risk of hospitalisation and death, they are not as effective at preventing transmission.
This means someone infected with the virus can still pass it on to someone who is double-jabbed, although the risk is still higher in those who are not vaccinated.
But Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at Edinburgh University, said ‘we’re pretty close’ to hitting the key threshold.
Professor Woolhouse, who sits on a modelling sub-committee of SAGE, told Times Radio on Sunday: ‘We’re pretty close.
‘Ninety per cent of adults have some sort of vaccination… but there are still around 8million adults in the UK who have not been vaccinated.’
He added: ‘We don’t know how people’s behaviour is going to change over the winter months.
‘I suspect we’re going to be bouncing around either side of the herd immunity threshold for quite a few months to come, probably over the whole winter.’
Separately, Sir Pollard told the APPG said the fight against Covid should focus on preventing hospitalisations and death.
He said: ‘We can’t do anything to stop new variants emerging around the world. We need to focus on how do we prevent people dying or going to hospital.
‘We had 67,000 deaths around the world last we and more than 4billion vaccine doses were deployed globally.
‘There are enough doses given out around the world to have prevented those deaths but they died anyway.
‘What we can do is play a more active role in the global imperative to stop people dying and make sure vaccines are going to the right people.’
Around 30 per cent of the world has now received a dose of a vaccine and 15.5 per cent are fully immunised, according to Our World in Data.
But the data shows only 1.1 per cent of people in low-income countries have received a single dose.