The sweeping changes in testing in Wales are launching the established Covid control practices we have all been accustomed to for the past two years. Although they may seem partly harmless, there are some consequences that are far-reaching and can cause real concern to people who have made great efforts to protect themselves over the past two years.
WalesOnline has gone through the changes announced on Monday, March 28 to assess what this means for you, your family and Wales as a whole as we move into the next phase of the virus. Read more: Mark Drakeford is getting closer than he should ever have said there will be no more lockdowns
What was the announcement?
Wednesday, March 30 is the last day that the public can book a PCR test if they have symptoms As of Thursday, March 31, all PCR testing sites in Wales will be closed and free lateral flow tests to support regular asymptomatic testing in the workplace will be closed, except for health and social care workers. Free public flow tests for regular asymptomatic tests will expire on Thursday 31 March From Friday, April 1, if you have Covid symptoms, you should use a lateral flow test to check if you have Covid and from that date, only those who qualify for COVID-19 treatment will be able to order a test. PCR at home. The usual asymptomatic tests in childcare and education areas, in addition to the provision of special education, will stop on Friday, April 8
What are the hidden consequences of these changes in Covid?
The end of regular routine testing
Simple and straightforward, the new Welsh government directive means you can not have a PCR or free lateral flow test unless you have Covid symptoms. This means that, for all intents and purposes, extensive testing is over in Wales. Many of us do tests before we go to see elderly, vulnerable relatives or before we go to work. The Prime Minister called this “flow before you go”. However, people will no longer be able to request free exams to do so. Unless an employer pays or buys their own test, there will be no tests for asymptomatic people. It is difficult to know exactly how many cases this has identified. But it is likely to be in the tens of thousands. Currently, LFTs are for use only by asymptomatic individuals. The latest data from the Public Health of Wales suggest that 239,482 test results were reported in Wales that week (many more likely to have been used but reported) and of these 30,712 were positive. Only one test result per person is included in the PHW data, so this does not include multiple tests per person. Under this new guidance, all these asymptomatic positive cases would have been lost unless people were willing to pay for their own LFT. This is a huge number of people who unknowingly walk around transmitting the virus, with no way of knowing they actually have it.
You no longer need (or very little) pinging and being told to do a test
And think about the consequences. All 30,712 cases would have contacts who may well have been pinged and told to take a test. Since many of these cases will simply never be detected now, this means that far fewer people will receive messages asking them to take a test to see if they are infected.
You will never know if this sniffle was Covid (unless you pay)
Many people have recently reported a much wider range of Covid symptoms than they had initially seen. Instead of coughing, chills and loss of taste or smell, people find that they have Covid but none of these symptoms. Instead, they may simply have a runny nose, headache and loss of energy. All of these can be symptoms of a cold or the flu or RSV or another virus. From now on, we will never know if it was Covid, unless we pay for a test.
Very few people isolate themselves
In its most basic terms, from now on in Wales, if you have Covid and have no symptoms, you can not isolate yourself if you do not want to, because there is no way to know if you have the disease. Many of the people isolated at this time may never have discovered that they had the virus under the new regime. This has consequences for all the people who are currently shielded as shops and other places will become much more potentially dangerous places.
How can you protect your vulnerable relative now?
Thanks to vaccines and the Omicron variant, far fewer people are now dying from Covid. However, this does not mean that there are still people in society who are extremely vulnerable to the disease. One of the main ways to protect them was for close relatives and friends to do a side flow test to make sure they were not asymptomatic. This is no longer something the government will pay to help us do. Instead, people will have to pay. Retail tests about 2 καθ each online. If you are a caregiver and visit your nanny every day, then this could be £ 60 a month for your outings. This has the potential to mean that the poorer vulnerable will be less secure.
We just will not know how widespread Covid is and where
Every day since the spring of 2020, WalesOnline publishes daily case data for the whole of Wales. This includes an analysis of the infection rate at each local authority in Wales. This data is now completely unnecessary as a way of measuring the extent of the virus. On a weekly basis we would publish the areas where Covid was growing faster and the places with the highest percentage up to individual chambers of the municipality. This data now simply will not exist. Without routine testing, we are in many ways returning to the stage we were at in March 2020, when the Welsh government was competing for testing and almost no one was able to do so. Of course, there are huge differences in the form of vaccines, etc., but the fact is that we no longer have a true picture of what is happening with the virus in Wales. There will be some monitoring. The National Statistical Office is currently investigating the infection. This has weekly data for Wales, but is limited. There is no local analysis and the update is much slower. The Welsh government also has the ability to monitor wastewater (for now). But hospitalization will now become the clearest indicator of whether Wales has a Covid problem. And we know from previous waves that by the time people start going to the hospital, the horse has long since sunk in terms of actual restraint measures.
Variation monitoring will be very limited
First was the Kent variant (now Alpha), then the Indian (now Delta) variant. Since then we have Omicron and BA.2. Our lives and front pages were full of different variations and the impact they had on our lives. With far fewer PCR tests done, there will be much more limited capacity for public health teams to understand the changes in Covid that are happening in the community. There will still be genomic surveillance of cases entering hospitals, but it will be on a fraction of the scale that is currently happening and it will be much slower to respond. Read more related articles Read more related articles
