New Details Of Swadlincote's Covid-19 Rapid Community Testing Programme Have Been Revealed

New details about the rapid community Covid-19 testing regime set to be rolled out in Swadlincote from next Monday have been revealed.

The military and soon-to-be-recruited Derbyshire residents will be aiming to carry out more than 150,000 rapid Covid-19 tests in Swadlincote over six weeks.

Residents have been urged to remember that a negative test result is not a "free pass" to ignore current public health guidance.

Swadlincote will be the first site of the community roll-out from December 21, and it will be testing people from across South Derbyshire.

Rapid lateral flow tests, which produce a result in under 30 minutes, will be carried out on one site – yet to be determined – in the town, and this will be expanded to three sites by the end of the year.

The military will be setting up and running the sites while the council looks to recruit and train up to 300 residents to take over the duties from next year.

These staff will operate the sites across the county once they are up and running.

This is the reason Derbyshire was able to get community testing before many other areas – that military support would be temporary.

Residents will be urged to get tested twice a week for the first fortnight and then once a week for each of the following four weeks – six weeks of testing in total.

If a resident tests positive on the lateral flow tests (rapid tests) they will then take a "confirmatory" polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.

This is due to the lateral flow tests not being as accurate as the slower PCR tests, with occasional false positives and negatives, especially if administered by people who are not healthcare professionals.

The confirmatory PCR will be sent off by a priority courier with an aim to bring back a test result within 24 hours.

During this time, between tests, the resident, if they tested positive on the initial rapid test, will be asked to start self-isolating, along with other members of their household.

They will also be asked for their recent contacts.

Once the PCR test result is received, and if it also shows a positive result for Covid-19, resident's recent contacts will be contacted to carry out tracing procedures, to provide advice around self-isolating, and to point them in the direction of mental health or voluntary services for further support.

The rapid testing centres would be walk-through, not drive-through and people would have to book appointments.

Dean Wallace, Derbyshire County Council's director of public health, said the rapid community testing would not be mass-testing as seen in Liverpool and would be more targeted.

It would focus on areas, starting with South Derbyshire, followed by Bolsover and Amber Valley, which have high rates of Covid-19 infections in a bid to more accurately track the issue and to quash the virus.

In mid to late January and February testing is also expected to be carried out in Bakewell and Chesterfield.

In phase three, from March onwards, community testing will target areas with outbreaks or rising infection rates including workplaces and schools.

Mr Wallace told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the military would assist with the immediate roll-out of the rapid community testing.

Council staff, once trained up and provided with full personal protective equipment, will take over from them.

Mr Wallace said: "We could have done this some time in 2021, but with military support we can start quicker and get it moving.

"We will be getting local people trained up and that should help those people who are out of work because of Covid. There is opportunity there for work for the months to come.

"We will start with a focus on communities and then move it around based on the infection rates, to find out what is really going on in those places, getting people to get tested who have no symptoms.

"In quite rural parts of the county we can look to put this type of testing in and we are looking to partner with the university (University of Derby) in evaluating our approach.

"We will be looking for people to book, what we don't want is lots of people stood in queues and there will be a flexible booking system."

The current mobile testing unit, which runs PCR tests will still be rotated around the county and city.

Mr Wallace said it is really important that people know that there are concerns around the rapid tests. He says there are a small number of false positives and false negatives.

This, he says, is the reason for the back-up PCR tests.

Testing in large numbers, Mr Wallace says, "helps us find people who would have been asymptomatic and may well have passed it (Covid-19) on at some point, to someone vulnerable and who may have become a super-spreader without even realising it.

He said: "It is an extra tool that we have got but it is not a silver bullet.

"Some of the comms around it in certain quarters makes it sound like this will get us out of jail.

"It will help, in conjunction with good contact tracing, in conjunction with people following the guidance and everything else.

"With a vaccine it will help even more.

"What it will help us do is identify particular hotspots and double-check where we are seeing data that raises a red flag.

"To be clear, this doesn't give you a free pass to not follow any of the guidance and rules that we need people to follow. What we really need is the infection rate to be as low as possible, then we can reopen the economy and open things back up.

"At the moment, the infection rate is still too high."