Coronavirus: Screening

(asked on 15th July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the current rate for false (a) positives and (b) negatives from (i) PCR and (ii) lateral flow covid-19 tests.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 26th July 2021

Since August 2020, Public Health England has evaluated over 150 lateral flow antigen devices produced by United Kingdom and international manufacturers. To date, 31 have displayed performance characteristics desirable for mass testing, namely a very high specificity and sensitivity – or low false positive and false negative - against viral loads associated with infectiousness.

Specificity and sensitivity vary from test to test. The rate of kit failure or false positive or negative, from a phase two evaluation was 9.9%. Real time polymerase chain reaction tests are highly sensitive and highly specific at over 90%, but may still show low rates of false negative and false positive results. These false negative and false positive results cannot be entirely eliminated and all tests should be interpreted in light of clinical history and presentation.

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