two different tests can achieve these
separate goals the first is the PCR or
polymerase chain reaction test that's
being used on a large scale globally
it's a simple test where a swab from the
back of the throat or nose is taken the
result can be obtained in a couple of
days as the test looks for the existence
of genetic material from the virus it's
considered extremely accurate the second
type of test is for those who have had
the infection it looks for antibodies to
covert 19 and is also regarded as
extremely accurate it does require a
blood test
though it can give results in ten
minutes antibodies can live in the body
for a long time so the tests can be used
long after recovery our health and
social care correspondent Victoria
McDonald reports test test test we do
intend to continue to scale up testing
so that we hit 25,000 tested AIDS we do
not have sufficient testing so we've now
bought three and a half million antibody
tests everybody wants this so there is a
global shortage of these tests are
crucially important we have ordered and
we have planned ahead the government has
as we can see repeatedly promised
scaling up testing for covered 19 with
plans to reach 250,000 a day the reality
so far is significantly smaller compared
with our European neighbors as this
graph shows we are well behind the curve
early on public health England or pH he
tested everyone suspected of having the
virus once the battle to contain it had
been lost they started testing only the
most vulnerable patients in hospitals as
well as care home and prison clusters
repeated questions have been asked about
why there is no general population
testing and why we had not prepared
earlier it is now clear there is a
shortage of materials to do the PCR
testing which happens in laboratories
indeed a leaked email from a major NHS
trust reveals we have faced a slight
issue with swab results over this
weekend and today with very few results
returning it would appear that it is
sheer volume they are working hard to
get more runs up and running but there
is a concern with the supply of reagents
it is therefore important that we ensure
we only swab patients and staff who have
symptoms and who meet the criteria only
eight thousand two hundred and seventy
eight tests were done on Sunday on just
under five thousand people suggesting
this trust was far from alone yet
Germany is now doing five hundred
thousand tests a week this leading
virologist told us it was about planning
I think one of the bottlenecks currently
in many countries is supply of reagents
for labs and I believe I'm not sure what
I believe that this is somehow like the
supply follows the demand and we we
created a demand very early on in
Germany so what what happened is in fact
that we rolled out this tests already in
January and I mean this was this was
available to two labs across the globe
but in Germany we have a community
that's very open for establishing new
diagnostic assays for several structural
reasons there are a range of self
testing kits currently being evaluated
including samples of the 3.5 million
antibody tests which the government has
promised we used one kit to test
Hamish Anderson he's been in isolation
with severe symptoms for coronavirus for
15 days and is now out and feeling
better he tested at the height of his
illness but it was negative he tested
again today and it shows he does have
the antibodies I feel relieved that I
know I've had it hopefully I can't pass
it to anyone else and as and when I can
get out there and start working again I
can do that in a in a way that I know
that I've had it obviously this is not
meant to be scientific but it does
highlight the desperate need to find out
who has had covered 19 and who can go
back to work especially health care
workers it's estimated one in four and
now off sick or in isolation I think
it's really important to be open with
the public and and with the staff in the
NHS about the volume of testing that is
available and then therefore
you may need to prioritize who gets the
test but at the moment what we're being
told is that we're going to see this
massive ramping up of testing but we
don't have a time scale so every day
naturally the doctors I represent are
waiting because they believe that they
will be tested it also remains unclear
why it's taking so long in the UK to use
University and private laboratories as
they are in Germany this responsibility
lies with the Department of Health and
Social Care but there are also delays in
signing off the evaluations of different
types of pcr and infections tests
Channel 4 News has seen a list of 19
different available virus testing
systems that were being evaluated by phe
on March the 6th three weeks later we
know of just three of these rash Nova
sites and ran Doc's who are now
supplying tests phe said tonight the
rollout of additional capacity requires
properly trained staff equipment and a
supply of consumables as well as for a
validation process for the lab to ensure
the results are correct
accuracy is especially important given
the Phe and NHS laboratory capacity is
focused on testing the most vulnerable
patients and IC use for whom the result
will influence vital clinical management
and infection prevention and control
decisions and in response to questions
about testing tonight the Cabinet Office
minister said this a critical constraint
on the ability to rapidly increase
testing capacity is the availability of
the chemical reagents which are
necessary in the testing the Prime
Minister and the health secretary are
working with companies worldwide to
ensure that we get the material we need
to increase tests of all coins today it
was announced that ten thousand seven
hundred and sixty seven people in
England alone are currently in hospital
with covered 19 symptoms up from over
nine thousand yesterday more numbers but
behind those numbers are some
desperately ill patients and Victoria is
with me now live what is going on with
testing well it is one of the first
acknowledge acknowledge Minh that we've
had from Gov
today that there is this problem with
supply although we perhaps have known us
for a while ourselves so what we need to
know now is why they didn't plan this
earlier because we saw that Germany
could see that there was a problem with
with getting these reagents or whatever
and they started getting them in in
January ok so this will all come out in
the wash when we do an analysis after
this is all over but the fact is very
very important people in the health
service and you have people like Jeremy
hunt them now the chair of the Health
and Social Care Committee who are saying
why aren't we testing more and it seems
to me that there is a systems problem
that there is that this problem with not
getting University labs up and running
the problem with not getting the testing
done quicker is it's inexplicable when
we know just how urgent this problem is
and I don't doubt that everybody
involved wants the best that they do
want to test that there is something
there is some barrier and it's not clear
and it's not just that there isn't
enough reagent there's something else
going on now we also saw a big jump in
the absolute number of deaths being
reported today but there is also some
confusion around those numbers and they
slightly change according to what you're
looking at precisely can you explain
this I can't actually cuz I wish I could
but for all of us there are problems
with all the numbers it's the same with
the testing so it looks like some of the
Trust's are reporting over three or four
days we saw that with Northwood Park
last week some trusts are reporting on
the day or up to the weekend then we
have the Office of National Statistics
figures which came out for the first
time today which are looking at
community deaths and deaths and care
homes for instance now they increase the
figures up to March the 20th the death
rate figures by 24 percent so you can
see there is a problem already and
comparing like with like yesterday we
saw lower than expected death figures
today we're seeing quite a big increase
and it's it's very hard then to see
where it whether there's a leveling off
or
where we are in terms of the epidemic
except that we know probably that it is
still going up and up and up the factors
and as I said in my film just now of
course behind every single one of these
figures are people real people and we
probably can understand that there are
some people out there who have died who
we will never know had coronavirus who
will it will never be attributed to
because they weren't tested before they
died no because they weren't tested or
it wasn't put on the death certificate
Victoria thank you very much with the
speed of testing for coronavirus being
deemed an absolute priority as you've
heard Sanderson Liverpool are among
those working to establish whether new
10-minute tests are accurate and can be
rolled out for widespread use but they
say it'll be weeks rather than days
before the tests can be properly
validated it comes as academics at other
universities are offering the government
space and resources to increase current
testing our north of England
correspondent Claire Fallon has this
report
inside this lab they're gathering the
data that could turn around the odds in
the battle against coronavirus tight
biosecurity measures mean we're out here
looking in while in there they test the
tests that could transform the response
we call them lateral flow test but most
people would recognize them as a sort of
pregnancy test so something you can more
or less do yourself and the results are
available in ten minutes we've heard
about 10-minute testing before but the
work being led by dr. Emily Adams and
Liverpool is to try and establish where
the new tests work they're checking the
reliability of diagnostic tools that
identify the covert 19:00 DNA as well as
antibody tests that reveal potential
immunity they're the kind of tests we've
been told repeatedly for weeks we'll be
ramped up in number and rolled out very
soon there have been incidents at across
Europe where large batches of tests have
been procured and they've had to be sent
back to the companies involved because
they have not been up to
so it that those reports are concerning
it's great that they're being picked up
and we just want to make sure that any
testing in the UK and further afield is
a high quality but it must be
frustrating when you hear people talking
about we're doing tests at the moment
we're going to be rolling these out
within a matter of days when you know
it's more time-consuming than that I
guess there's a so much interest in the
diagnostic aspect of the work but
validation is really key right we don't
want to have bad tests available to
patients we don't want them to say that
they've had an antibody response to
infection when in fact they haven't at
all in another lab in another city
they're freeing up space and getting a
team ready
[Music]
um maintenance to save as many lives as
possible in the short medium and long
term the University of Manchester and
the city's hospitals are pooling
resources and knowledge and have formed
a Rapid Response Research Unit Professor
Graham Lord told me as the number of
cases accelerates in some parts of the
north they may need a different approach
to that in London Greater Manchester has
an older less healthy population than
London on average and we know that this
virus is particularly severe on all the
patients and patients is what more we
call comorbidities but my concern is
that it will it can potentially
potentially widened most health
inequalities because I think the
population of Greater Manchester and and
the north more generally are likely to
be more severely affected it's a bleak
prospect but as so many have said more
testing is vital in shifting the odds
and saving more lives we have asked the
government to come on the programme but
no one was available tonight earlier I
spoke to dr. Rangarajan Sampath from the
foundation for innovative new
Diagnostics who's working with the World
Health Organization on Diagnostics for
covered 19 and I began by asking him if
the UK government's ambition to test up
to 25,000 people a day was enough for a
population of 65 million I can tell you
just listening to the volume of test
requirements that's not going to be
adequate for a population within the UK
and I can imagine a place like London
with its population and the demand for
these tests will be quickly overrun in a
hospital based setting given the
limitations similar to most other what
most of the countries are experienced I
mean at the moment people who are
admitted into hospital with severe
coronavirus symptoms seem to be getting
tested some health care workers some
VIPs politicians royal family that kind
of thing what does that mean for the
reliability of statistics about the rate
of infection because they've also said
today
that you know the green shoots of
perhaps flattening a beginning can we
rely on those sorts of numbers it's it's
a start but we know that it's not going
to give you the full picture as
definitely as dr. Ted rose from WH o
said unless you really scale up testing
and start testing really broadly you'll
never get to the two numbers when is the
right time to start large-scale antibody
testing in a population definitely not
for initial triage of screening and I
think that's been one of the biggest
challenges that we are facing there's a
lot of noise made about these rapid
anybody tests but if you understand what
antibody tests are exactly as a name
such as that's what the human body
mounts us in response to the viral
infection which means it takes somewhere
between seven and ten days before he can
start detecting these antibodies so I
think it's not appropriate to think of
rapid set of logical tests or anybody
based as at the frontline at this stage
of the game the government's also saying
that there is a problem with the supply
of reagents the chemicals being used in
these tests how much of a problem is
that worldwide and the reagent shortage
is not just in terms of the what the
manufacturer claims in terms of their
own as he's in regions it's also
ancillary reagents that need to be there
so we have seen shortages of everything
from simple swabs which you need to
collect the specimen if you don't have
the specimens if not at the testing it
is a challenge but it's not limited to
the rapid test so I don't want to
confuse the two in the same breath
some people are also already also
raising questions about whether we
should have taken these decisions a lot
earlier now have you as scientists been
saying you should be ordering the
chemicals now you should be ordering the
tests now you know you should be doing
everything much earlier given that the
warning went out at the end of January
warning went out even before not in the
end of January is although it was
already too late having said that once
an early warning bells in the early part
of January started coming through
definitely I think as a
world organisations we should have added
at the countries they should have been a
better preparedness plan put in place
and not assume that somehow this was
going to be contained within the you
know Chinese or even at the time where
Korea started implementing some of the
early policy that is going to be
contained and just finally on all the
different types of tests whether it's
the PCR test or the antibody test I mean
all the countries around the world seem
to be having their own sort of
endorsement regimes and there seems to
be very little cooperation is that
normal
it's unfortunate because I think a
better uniform harmony in sort of some
of these standards would definitely help
unfortunately we don't want to forget
but every one of these outbreaks teaches
us something new and this is definitely
the scale of this is definitely taken
everyone by surprise