Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of covid-19 test results from PCR tests in Pillar 2 settings are false positive.

All tests have been assessed as performing to manufacturers’ specifications before being used. The established Lighthouse laboratories that undertake the majority of test processing have been reviewed by experts, each has a clinical virology lead and we are satisfied the test is reliable and effective. Like any diagnostic test however, there is always the small possibility of a false negative or a false positive result. In the Lighthouse laboratories the specificity of testing is monitored by participation in External Quality Assurance and by sending all positive specimens to the Welcome Sanger laboratory at Cambridge and data suggests that more than 99.9% of results are confirmed as COVID-19.