Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of COVID-19 tests being taken at regional testing sites have been processed and the results communicated to patients within 48 hours of the test being taken.
Answered by Lord Bethell
To provide a more comprehensive response to a number of outstanding Written Questions, this has been answered by an information factsheet Testing – note for House of Lords which is attached, due to the size of the data. A copy has also been placed in the Library
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of COVID-19 home tests have been processed and the results communicated to patients within 72 hours of the test being taken.
Answered by Lord Bethell
To provide a more comprehensive response to a number of outstanding Written Questions, this has been answered by an information factsheet Testing – note for House of Lords which is attached, due to the size of the data. A copy has also been placed in the Library
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, for each day of distribution, how many home testing kits for COVID-19 did not have the complete information included to allow the test to be returned and processed. [T]
Answered by Lord Bethell
To provide a more comprehensive response to a number of outstanding Written Questions, this has been answered by an information factsheet Testing – note for House of Lords which is attached, due to the size of the data. A copy has also been placed in the Library
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the likelihood of COVID-19 becoming endemic in the UK in the long term.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Total eradication of SARS-CoV-2 globally is unlikely. Elimination nationally - that is, bringing the number of locally acquired cases to zero - may be possible transiently but is highly unlikely to be possible permanently. Though other countries appear to have eliminated the virus locally, it is still early in the pandemic and the virus is very likely to reappear in these countries.
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of collecting a sample for COVID-19 testing through self-swabbing home test kits in comparison to tests administered by medical professionals.
Answered by Lord Bethell
International peer reviewed evidence, and real-world assessments from the Department’s testing programme has shown that swab tests taken by non-clinically trained individuals are just as effective as those taken by clinicians. Instructions on how to perform these types of tests are included wherever individuals are asked to undertake self-swabbing.
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what formal statistical confidence limit is represented by the very likely upper and lower bounds on the estimated COVID-19 reproduction rate, R, as published on the government website.
Answered by Lord Bethell
R is an average value that can vary in different parts of the country and communities. It cannot be measured directly, and calculating R becomes more uncertain when using small numbers of cases, either due to lower infection rates or smaller geographical areas.
Even when the overall United Kingdom R estimate is below 1, some regions may have R estimates that include ranges that exceed 1, for example from 0.7 to 1.1. This does not necessarily mean the epidemic regionally is increasing, just that the uncertainty in the data means it cannot be ruled out.
Estimates of R for geographies smaller than regional level are less reliable and it is more appropriate to identify local hotspots through, for example, monitoring numbers of cases, hospitalisations, and deaths.
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many people were discharged from hospital to care homes in England in each of the last 12 weeks; and how many of those people had been tested for COVID-19. [T]
Answered by Lord Bethell
At the beginning of June 2020, NHS England published an analysis of hospital discharges to care homes between 30 January 2020 and 16 April 2020, with a comparison to care home discharged from the same period in 2019. A copy of this analysis is attached, due to the size of the data. The information on how many of those people had tested for COVID-19 is not currently published to the level of detail requested.
As of 1 June, there had been 153,836 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in England.
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bethell on 5 May (HL3910), what was the (1) number, and (2) percentage, of returned home COVID-19 test kits that were void due to an inadequate self-swabbed sample.
Answered by Lord Bethell
As of 25 May 2020, 9,761 COVID-19 home test kits received a void result. This equates to 4.8% of all returned home test kits.
It is important to note that a void result can be caused by a number of factors. This includes inadequate or incorrect self-swabbing, a failure of the user to return the swab in a timely manner, or other factors that prevent the sample from being efficiently returned and processed.
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they informed NHS England's Director of Primary Care of their intention to update the guidance for people who are clinically extremely vulnerable from COVID-19 to advise that they can now leave their homes if they wish.
Answered by Lord Bethell
We have engaged extensively with NHS England and NHS Improvement via the Department’s Clinical Oversight Group, of which NHS England and NHS Improvement are members, and through several stakeholder calls throughout the process of updating the guidance and will continue to do so.
Asked by: Baroness Thornton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bethell on 1 June (HL4872), why they will not publish the reproduction index for the COVID-19 virus for each region of the UK on a weekly basis, alongside the United Kingdom-wide range.
Answered by Lord Bethell
R is an average number and so can be highly uncertain if based on small quantities of data. R should be considered alongside the number of new cases. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies’ view is that it is unhelpful to use estimates of R rates to monitor the epidemic in different regions.