Barnsley Infection Rate

I don't know why it's increased in Barnsley so much more than other areas. I checked the stats when I saw this and in Barnsley, in the last week, there were 413 new cases with an R of 1.1.

In my Borough of London (with around 320,000 people) the R was 0.6 and just 65 cases.

 

I read that barnsley is using the Innova rapid flow test which gives 22 false positives for every 7000 tests carried out. There are almost 13,000 secondary school pupils in barnsley so not including the teachers or college students that's 26,000 tests per week which is about 81 people on the list as positive when they aren't. And that's purely secondary school pupils, it's not including the family's etc.

The question is are all towns using the same test? Are they testing the same number as in barnsley?
The r number is complete rubbish in my opinion because the more people tested the higher the r number

 

I saw a news article on TV and an interview with an 'expert' who said that the towns where there are a lot of lower paid jobs, the infection rate is higher. This is due to the fact that lower paid jobs have less flexibility and require people to physically attend a place of work often alongside others. This was specifically on the topic of Barnsley's higher rates.

 

Are Innova rapid flow tests solely used in Barnsley?

 

I've no idea. The fact that they give 22 false positives out of just under 7000 tests suggests they can't be widely used everywhere or the numbers seem artificially low in other towns.

 

I just ask, because if they are used across the country (and I can't see why only Barnsley would have them), and they are less effective and show false positives, then the areas with the highest populations would be distorted more wouldn't they?

There are loads of schools near me so you'd think they'd have the same/ similar rates of misreporting as in Barnsley if they are using the same devices. But the levels are much lower than Barnsley.

 

When looking at the rate of a single area, there should be less emphasis on the type of test used, and look at what other differences there are in the areas. What proportion of people are unable to work from home? How many requests for financial support have been declined? How much compliance has there been on self isolation (related to last question)?

The focus shouldn't be on number of tests, or type of tests. It should be on identifying any social inequalities that contribute to the issue and what is, or isn't being done about them.

 

You're right but when the false positive rate for the test is higher than the national average positive test rates then questions have to be asked.

 

NHS staff including myself have been using them for months, so no not just Barnsley.

If I were to test positive then I would have to follow it up with a PCR test, so the lateral flow wouldn't go into the figures I don't think.

 

I have 2 home test kits that came home with lads from school.

Xiamen Biotime

Whoever they are

 

Just done a quick google, seem to be a Chinese equivalent of Innova (though don't seem to be very established), but not much quick info out there to give much indication to if they are more accurate than Innova.

 

We have carried out around 5000 tests on students at our school and have had 3 positives. I thought they were more likely to give false negatives than positives?

 

They are. The false negatives rate is even higher than the false positive but even if there's 3000 false negatives that shouldn't affect the fact that there should be some false positives too.

 

Its testing twice as many people to find cases that has caused the figures to spike. All around the same date.

It doesnt help that in BMBC weve got loads of big labour intensive warehouse jobs.

I dont think theres been many days exceeding 1% positivity though.

 

I know what you’re saying in that false negatives don’t matter unless there’s positive cases. It should right now still mean that there are actually less cases than reported.

 

Xiamen Biotime are the manufacturer of the Innova kits it says on the back of my tests.

@DannyWilsonLovechild fyi

 

It should but the same throughout the country I would have have thought. I can't get me head around the fact that the tests are proven to have a certain false positive rate, every secondary school should be doing tests way in excess of those false positive figures and yet the figures reported for the majority of towns is below the false positive amount.

Could it be that we are reporting every positive test while other towns are requiring a second more reliable test band that's the figure they're releasing? No idea personally I just know what it's weird for towns to do over 30,000 tests and only have 45 positive results when in theory if you tested 30,000 completely healthy people who 100% didn't have covid you'd expect around 90 of them to wrongly test positive.

 

If we really really fall out with China.....

 

I think it was mentioned earlier that a positive test on a lateral flow device leads to an official test to detect an official positive with more certainty. Do we know if childrens tests are in the official figures?

 

All test results are supposed to be logged on the gov website but it’s up to each person to do it. Are people in Barnsley being lazier and only logging the positive cases, thereby pushing the percentage of positive tests up higher?