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Version 13 | Version 14 |
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Coronavirus: Can I get tested for coronavirus? | |
(about 16 hours later) | |
Testing is key to tackling coronavirus and the UK hopes to increase the number of people tested to 25,000 a day in the coming weeks. | |
Daily testing reached about 8,000 people by the end of March. | |
What is the test? | |
To find out if someone currently has Covid-19, a swab is taken of their nose or throat and this is sent off to a lab to look for signs of the virus's genetic material. | |
Can I get tested? | |
At the moment, most of the tests are being reserved for seriously ill patients in hospital. Most people with symptoms can't get tested to see if they are currently infected with coronavirus. | |
But these tests are now being made available to doctors and nurses who have symptoms, or who live in a household with someone who does. Tests for other health and care workers will follow. | |
Why is testing important? | |
There are two main reasons for testing people - to diagnose them individually, and to try to understand how widely and to whom the virus has spread ("surveillance testing"). | |
This can allow the health service to plan for extra demand on intensive care units. | |
It can inform decisions around tightening or relaxing social distancing measures - for example, if it became known that the virus had already infected large numbers of people then a lockdown might become less necessary. | |
And not testing more widely means that many people might be self-isolating for no good reason, including NHS workers. | |
The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, "we cannot stop this pandemic if we do not know who is infected". | |
Why isn't the UK doing more tests? | |
The UK does not appear to have the resources to do mass testing at the moment. | |
The government said it has reached the lab capacity to do about 12,000 tests, but so far just over 8,000 people are being tested a day. | |
At first, Public Health England was only conducting the test at its own eight laboratories. This has been expanded to 40 NHS labs - so 48 labs in total. | |
Testing depends not just on the number of labs, but on the availability of machines, test kits and the chemicals these kits need to work. These components are in high demand globally. | Testing depends not just on the number of labs, but on the availability of machines, test kits and the chemicals these kits need to work. These components are in high demand globally. |
South Korea, which has been able to test far more widely than the UK has, acted very quickly to approve the production of testing kits, allowing it to build up a stockpile. | |
Despite having a slightly smaller population than the UK, it has twice as many labs and about two-and-a-half times the weekly testing capacity. | |
What about antibody tests? | |
The testing being done at the moment looks for signs someone currently has the virus. | |
There is another type of test - an antibody test - which looks for signs of immunity in the blood and could show whether someone's already had coronavirus. | |
Antibody tests use a drop of blood on a device a bit like a pregnancy test. | Antibody tests use a drop of blood on a device a bit like a pregnancy test. |
These could help work out how widespread the disease has been and whether people who may have been self-isolating - including vital NHS staff - are safe to go back to work. | |
The government has bought three-and-a-half million antibody tests, but they are not yet available to use. The tests are still being checked to make sure they work. | |
An inaccurate test which tells someone they have immunity when they don't could be very problematic. | |
Follow Rachel on Twitter | |
What do I need to know about the coronavirus? | What do I need to know about the coronavirus? |