IOM Covid removing restrictions

[Nom de plume]

4 minutes ago, Cambon said:

More rubbish. Nothing to do with testing. Everything to do with poor isolation. 

If it is true, it is hardly unexpected. 

That’s fine, appreciate the rubbish comment.

You don’t believe that testing adds any benefit in detecting cases & mitigating risk of transmission.

I can’t understand why the world is spending literally billions & billions on the practice then - what a load of idiots they must be.

[Banker]

7 minutes ago, Cambon said:

More rubbish. Nothing to do with testing. Everything to do with poor isolation. 

If it is true, it is hardly unexpected. 

Of course it is testing issue, if we tested on arrival and got the positive cases then they would be much stricter on quarantine as well as those sharing house

[thommo2010]

Just now, asitis said:

Just had a text from my son in law to tell us there is a community case here ! 

Facebook will be fun reading tonight if true.

 

Got to remember the mess with Zurich though We were all going into lockdown because the whole of Zurich were infected

[Roger Mexico]

9 minutes ago, x-in-man said:

They stopped testing?  When?

They never really started properly.  The only people who have been regularly tested since the Spring have been hospital admissions, some health staff on an occasional basis and those triaged from 111 or similar with symptoms - which presumably wasn't very many.  There's only about 50-60 tests done a day, despite all the capacity.

Stopping the 7-day £50 test was sensible (in fact they were stupid starting it when they did) and the new exemption for frequent flyers is even dafter.  As so often with Covid responses here both were made on the basis of who was nagging the right people the hardest rather than on any scientific advice and the details weren't thought through.  But the end of the seven day test meant even less data was collected.

[BenFairfax]

59 minutes ago, John Wright said:

It’s sky media, so it’s airline and travel industry. That probably means it’s skewed. 

Found the article your conclusions based on 'Review of evidence on testing on arrival scheme', as said funded by airlines. Situation we find ourselves here is analogous, we are not an airline, but source of importation of COVID will be via one airport or one ferry port.

59 minutes ago, John Wright said:

Why would being tested now, 11 November, stop students going home?

Good point if testing now, but I thought this was not case across UK. Impression I was getting (via media) is testing will happen week or so before the are due to leave. Whatever happens between now and 11th Dec students need to be back if want to eat Christmas dinner with family and been told (I assume) to maintain good infection control protocols for 14 days after the arrive. By 'good' I mean after returning to family home will lock themselves in well ventilated bedroom, clean toilet/bathroom after every use (if do not have their own), avoid passing other household members in hallways, eat and prepare food either in own kitchen or clean kitchen after use, naturally use separate utensils/saucepans etc and eat alone I assume in bedroom. Just saying controlling infection in a household setting takes some doing. For me, if I was looking at 14 days of following all these controls, to allow 2 weeks after that to spend time with family, we would have likely concluded that best I stay in UK (but that just me, that is I would likely be in 10% of Manx students who are staying in UK). 

For everyone students themselves, student families in particular, and rest Manx residents to a lesser extent Manx students returning should get tested. Ideally before leave, so can stay in UK (which I assume they would general choose under that scenario), but if not..... Where is Dr Rachel Glover? She needs to tell us what needs to happen? 

Edited November 11, 2020 by BenFairfax
Typo, grammar

[tetchtyke]

Testing hasn't stopped. Non-resident key workers get tested before they can work. Resident key workers can have a test on day 7 if they're returning from work in the UK, or sooner if they're working here, such as doctors. Anyone with symptoms can have a test. Patient transfers get tested.

There's plenty of data from those groups. We know where they're catching it: England.

Testing on arrival is not accurate, so rather than assisting with quarantine compliance it's likely to do the opposite. A false negative is worse than no test at all.

Ending the Day 7 test was clearly more about discouraging non-essential travel off the island. I just wish the CM had explicitly said that.

Edited November 11, 2020 by tetchtyke

[trmpton]

30 minutes ago, Cambon said:

More rubbish. Nothing to do with testing. Everything to do with poor isolation. 

If it is true, it is hardly unexpected. 

Well.  If it’s true you can possibly say that without knowing more details.

Let’s assume it someone who has been away, infected someone else in their house who has then been out an about.

If that person had been tested two days before travel it might have picked something up and they could have waited.  If they had been tested on arrival they might have been picked up and either asked to isolate somewhere else or make the whole house hold stay home. Likewise a test after 3 and 7 days.

Chances of doing the above and not picking a case up are very low - so why not?  What’s the possible harm?

[Roger Mexico]

13 minutes ago, Banker said:

Of course it is testing issue, if we tested on arrival and got the positive cases then they would be much stricter on quarantine as well as those sharing house

The problem with that is that you don't get all the cases.  You do get more than the 7% that Ashford seems to have gotten into his head, which as I pointed out last week is based on a complete misreading of something that was inappropriate to start with.  But it's nothing like enough and some people feel that a negative result will encourage those who don't test positive to become lax in quarantine - even though some are infected.

The main argument for testing on arrival is convenience and biosecurity.  You get to swab everyone in what are (hopefully) the safest conditions you can manage.  Later testing would have to be done in people's homes.  But you need to do a second test as well and the same problems apply then. 

[piebaps]

If you get away from the "Jersey is best" keyboard warriors and actually look at the test data that we have, you'll immediately see that the introduction of a voluntary test, and its subsequent withdrawal, have not had a significant effect on the number of tests completed. Any data produced by the testing outside of a positive case is of dubious value.

We are unlike a lot of places with mass testing. We currently have no community transmission.

[tetchtyke]

Not many people were buying the Day 7 test because they didn't think the additional benefits were worth fifty quid, nor the risk of potentially adding a week to quarantine. So the removal didn't have much of an effect really, except symbolically making travel to the UK less appealing.

If there is a community case then it's likely come via a cross-household infection, which has always been the weak point of the quarantine rules.

I don't think the test on arrival effectiveness is as low as 7%, which is a figure based on effectiveness on day 1 of infection. But even 50% effectiveness is no better than flipping a coin.

Edited November 11, 2020 by tetchtyke

[Andy Onchan]

18 minutes ago, Cambon said:

More rubbish. Nothing to do with testing. Everything to do with poor isolation. 

If it is true, it is hardly unexpected. 

And that's because some think that because they don't have symptoms then they must be negative, which as we all know (well, most of us do) being asymptomatic means that others are still at risk. If they were tested on arrival some, granted not all, would have been picked up.

[tetchtyke]

3 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

And that's because some think that because they don't have symptoms then they must be negative, which as we all know (well, most of us do) being asymptomatic means that others are still at risk. If they were tested on arrival some, granted not all, would have been picked up.

The issue is that if the arrival test picks up 60% of infections, for instance, you have 4 in 10 positive people who think they're negative and less likely to quarantine.

I genuinely think false negatives are worse than no tests at all.

[Cambon]

5 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

And that's because some think that because they don't have symptoms then they must be negative, which as we all know (well, most of us do) being asymptomatic means that others are still at risk. If they were tested on arrival some, granted not all, would have been picked up.

The point is EVERY arrival is assumed positive. No household mixing is allowed. Any cross infection is poor isolation. 

[asitis]

56 minutes ago, Dougie said:

How would he know?

No idea but he was concerned enough to contact our older family !

[Roger Mexico]

9 minutes ago, tetchtyke said:

Not many people were buying the Day 7 test because they didn't think the additional benefits were worth fifty quid, nor the risk of potentially adding a week to quarantine. So the removal didn't have much of an effect really, except symbolically making travel to the UK less appealing.

There were about 3200 tests done in September, which was about twice the number done in August, so I think quite a number must have opted for it.

13 minutes ago, tetchtyke said:

I don't think the test on arrival effectiveness is as low as 7%, which is a figure based on effectiveness on day 1 of infection. But even 50% effectiveness is no better than flipping a coin.

That would only be true if all arrivals were infected, but it's certainly true that an arrival test on its own is completely inadequate