Up to 250,000 school pupils could be wrongly ordered to self-isolate after receiving ‘false positive’ Covid test, union warns
- Government insisted its school testing regime was 99.9 per cent reliable
- Lateral flow tests are being used three times on every secondary school pupil
- With 3.4million schoolchildren there could be 6,000 false positives a week
A quarter of a million pupils could be wrongly told to self-isolate after receiving ‘false positive’ Covid test results, a teaching union claimed yesterday.
But the Government insisted its school testing regime was 99.9 per cent reliable, giving only a ‘minimal chance’ of an incorrect reading.
Lateral flow tests are being used three times on every secondary school pupil in the first two weeks of term. They will then test themselves twice a week at home.
With 3.4million secondary schoolchildren nationwide, it could mean more than 6,000 false positives a week, even if the test is 99.9 per cent reliable.
Pupils from Chertsey High School take lateral flow tests for Covid-19 ahead of their full return to school, on March 8. The Government insisted its school testing regime was 99.9 per cent reliable, giving only a ‘minimal chance’ of an incorrect reading
Children who return a positive result at school cannot double-check the finding with a gold-standard PCR test, although they can if the test is taken at home.
In the event of a false positive result they will have to isolate for no reason.
The Association of School and College Leaders told TES, an education publication, its analysis suggested it ‘could lead to about a quarter of a million pupils needing to self-isolate unnecessarily… plus about 25,000 parents’.
The union added: ‘It could also have a significant impact on the numbers of students and parents consenting to on-site testing.
Year 11 students take lateral flow Covid-19 tests in the Sports Hall at Park Lane Academy in Halifax, northwest England on March 8. Lateral flow tests are being used three times on every secondary school pupil in the first two weeks of term
‘Frustratingly, it appears that this argument has fallen on deaf ears.’
The Government released research yesterday showing lateral flow tests will give less than one false positive result in every 1,000.
The tests have ‘a specificity of at least 99.9 per cent’, with ‘a minimal chance of a false positive’, health minister Lord Bethell said.