IOM Covid removing restrictions

[The Duck of Atholl]

27 minutes ago, John Wright said:

That’s not true. Testing on arrival will pick up, and exclude, those who have detectable viral load at arrival. That’s 7% of positives. Testing at 7 days picks up 80-85%. Testing at 10 days 85%+.  It’s a question of what risk is acceptable.

Even 14 days isolation has a very, very, small risk of a person with detectable load still being infectious and going out into the community and infecting others.

The thing is, unlike most viruses, Covid is infectious before people develop symptoms ( or don’t if they’re asymptomatic ). That’s where the greatest danger is. So pre travel or arrival testing, isolation, followed by 7 or 10 day testing, apparently achieves almost the same protection  as 14 day quarantine.

Perhaps we should at least trial test plus 7 and take it from there? All recent cases have been caught at this point with no escape into the community so IMO it's worth a punt.

[The Duck of Atholl]

6 minutes ago, The Duck of Atholl said:

Perhaps we should at least trial test plus 7 and take it from there? All recent cases have been caught at this point with no escape into the community so IMO it's worth a punt.

Edit: that should read test plus 7 and test

[Andy Onchan]

1 hour ago, thesultanofsheight said:

Costs seem to have been a big issue too agreed. I’m sure that’s maybe half of Glovers issue. Can you imagine being sat in front of your UK owner and explaining why the IOM has only bought 16,000 tests when Jersey has tested 150,000 people and the UK can’t keep up with testing demand? If you can’t make good profits selling an essential PCR test at the height of a global pandemic then I’m sure as a business you’d be questioning yourself? I wonder how many “What the fuck is going on we’re not being paid for many tests” conversations were had around all the other things? 

She owns the company, doesn't she?

I can't help thinking there's a massive irony about this in the respect that Rachel has invested and is very active in one of IOMG's much publicised business sectors, BioMed. Yet when it comes to using any services from one of the businesses that they are promoting they choose the cheapest way out by setting her up as a bank employee rather than pay the going rate. 

Fair do's you might say the taxpayer needs value for money but now the Nobles lab staff are trained there's no further use for Rachel's services. IOMG has history when it comes to this kind of behaviour.

Well fuck you IOMG. 

[John Wright]

34 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

She owns the company, doesn't she?

I can't help thinking there's a massive irony about this in the respect that Rachel has invested and is very active in one of IOMG's much publicised business sectors, BioMed. Yet when it comes to using any services from one of the businesses that they are promoting they choose the cheapest way out by setting her up as a bank employee rather than pay the going rate. 

Fair do's you might say the taxpayer needs value for money but now the Nobles lab staff are trained there's no further use for Rachel's services. IOMG has history when it comes to this kind of behaviour.

Well fuck you IOMG. 

And @thesultanofsheight

i think you’re confusing and conflating several things.

Rachel doesn’t own the testing facility. It’s a public laboratory owned by IOM government. 

Rachel has her own company in the biomedical sphere.

The two are separate.

IoM government owned a machine that could perform the technical aspects of PCR testing ( multiplying the RNA or DNA to high enough levels to allow gene sequencing to take place ). It wasn’t being used. One story was it had been bought to analyse genes in dog poo, but wasn’t used. Rachel remembered it was there, identified it, set it up, modified for Covid sequencing after the PCR had run, trained up staff, worked as required.

The one thing she did supply, through her company, apart from her time, the requirement for which was variable, unpredictable, was the reagents for the PCR part of the testing process. This she did at cost rather than retail. Saving about 2/3 of what IoMG would have had to pay without her.

The antigen testing, ie whether Covid is detectable in a test, requires the swabs, the multiplying PCR and the gene sequencing. It’s demand led. IOM uses it as required. It didn’t buy 100, or 1000 or 16,000. There may be a debate about wider testing. But generally we’ve only tested symptomatic people after triage, or key workers in health and care, or pre hospital admission.

Theres an argument about widening it. Random, or blanket, or 7 day testing for travellers/key workers. And I’m sure the data would be nice to have. Isn’t that what the spat is about, at its basic level. 7 day testing, for a few hundred, was withdrawn as a knee jerk without consultation with those who set it up or ran it, or who would be required to ramp it up to three shifts a day to deal with 800 tests a day.

The bought in tests are a mix of quickie antigen tests and the antibody tests. I’m not sure what connection they have with Rachel or what purpose they’d serve given we’ve been community Covid free for nearly 5 months, isn’t that why the preliminary antibody testing in June July seems to have not been finalised. I don’t know if the second 5000 were used, but if they were the results haven’t been analysed or results published.

Im sure @wrighty and @rachomicswill be along in a while to correct the glaring errors.

[Barlow]

Meanwhile on other social media outlets people are whinging like bastards that TKMaxx might have to close.

Edited November 1, 2020 by Barlow

[thesultanofsheight]

1 hour ago, Andy Onchan said:

She owns the company, doesn't she?

I checked on Cos Registry I’m not sure she does there’s a link to an off island interest if I recall. It was a few weeks ago now. But either way if you can’t make money during the biggest pandemic in 100 years by flogging or facilitating “gold standard” virus tests due to the IOM government as you say it’s no real advert for anyone moving here in the tech or biomed sector that’s for sure! 

Edited November 1, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[Gladys]

1 hour ago, Barlow said:

Meanwhile on other social media outlets people are whinging like bastards that TKMaxx might have to close.

It is a worry. 

[Banker]

4 hours ago, Major Rushen said:

Testing on arrival has no value. Testing after 7 days is good for data but isolation for 14 days is the safest option. Our main access point is the Northwest which is higher than Guernsey access point. As far as Guernsey is concerned everywhere is level 4 - isolate for 14 days.

Well you’re wrong, Jersey is in list for 7 days testing as below 100 in 100k . This main access point argument is used by Howie and its nonsense. Just come up with a proper system like Guernsey & Jersey and everyone knows where they stand when cases reach certain level.

The other big difference between us & CI is that they don’t ban family members from visiting unlike the caring IOM!

And as for allowing key workers to have 7 days testing so they can go out , what about the rest of us??

Edited November 1, 2020 by Banker

[John Wright]

23 minutes ago, Banker said:

And as for allowing key workers to have 7 days testing so they can go out , what about the rest of us??

That’s not what it’s for! It’s for agency or temporary health and care workers who are then allowed to perform certain patient/client facing roles.

[Banker]

9 minutes ago, John Wright said:

That’s not what it’s for! It’s for agency or temporary health and care workers who are then allowed to perform certain patient/client facing roles.

Well he said key workers at conference, think he already said health care workers are tested before doing any work with rapid tests for visiting consultants. I got the impression it was to allow key workers the ability to leave lodgings etc after 7 days.

[John Wright]

8 minutes ago, Banker said:

Well he said key workers at conference, think he already said health care workers are tested before doing any work with rapid tests for visiting consultants. I got the impression it was to allow key workers the ability to leave lodgings etc after 7 days.

Health and care workers are key workers, and the vast majority aren’t at consultant level.

[pongo]

As a non Christian, I'm not too bothered about Christmas (frankly I'd rather a few extra days off in May when the weather is nice - or better still scrap all public holidays).

But let's hope that the UK situation doesn't impact the govt's upcoming wonderful Festival of Brexit.

[thesultanofsheight]

5 hours ago, Barlow said:

Meanwhile on other social media outlets people are whinging like bastards that TKMaxx might have to close.

Could be interesting that though. What if they and the likes of TK & McDonalds etc close as the UK parents close and so can’t supply them with stock etc and the group policy is to observe UK lockdown? Will the IOM staff get any government support? I’d doubt it as it’s the parents decision to stop trading in the IOM but they won’t get UK furlough for the IOM workers either so what happens? It could leave employees of some UK controlled businesses in a pretty tricky position of just being sent home with no pay for 4 weeks? 

Edited November 1, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[Banker]

Guernsey got 2 new cases picked up on day1 with their testing on arrival. I know lots on here don’t like testing on arrival but it does pick up cases whereas our no testing =no cases policy doesn’t and let’s those who may be infected possibly pass to households 

[Nom de plume]

Maccies.

Closed.

I’ll leave that there.