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The Covid rapid tests used to pilot the Moonshot operation in Liverpool detect 77% of infected people and people and work equally well on people without symptoms.
Evaluation of the test produced by Innova and currently used for the first phase of mass testing in England has shown that it is “accurate and reliable,” officials said.
The Department of Health released test results by scientists from Oxford University and Public Health England, who said the 20-minute tests detected the majority of people infected with Covid-19 and produced a small number of false positives.
Experts said the tests would help detect a “large number” of hidden infections among people that would not have been discovered by the official system.
And they have been found to be 99.7% specific, which means they should only produce three false positives for every 1,000 people who take the test.
Of 50 commercially available rapid tests, only six have reached the latest round of PHE testing, the government agency said.
Rapid tests for people showing no signs of the disease began in Liverpool last week and around 27,000 out of 500,000 have accepted the offer so far.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set ambition for the country to perform 10 million tests per day next year across the country and officials say the rapid tests could be used to reopen venues like theaters and sports stadiums, rejecting people which test positive at the gate.
Rapid tests are not robust enough to work well when performed by members of the public and then handled by Liverpool-trained military personnel (pictured: Soldiers occupy a test center at Liverpool’s St Johns Market)
“The data from this validation report demonstrates that these inexpensive and easy-to-use tests can play an important role in our fight against Covid-19,” said Sir John Bell, professor of medicine at the University of Oxford and consultant in government tests.
Sir John worked alongside scientists from PHE’s Porton Down laboratory to evaluate the tests.
“They identify those who can spread the disease and, when used routinely in mass testing, can reduce transmissions by 90 percent,” he said.
“They will detect the disease in many people who have never been tested before.”
The benefit of the test, officials say, is that it works just as well on people who do not show coronavirus symptoms and therefore would not be eligible for a proper swab test.
If the tests can be distributed nationwide and used regularly by the public, it could prevent people from unknowingly spreading the disease.
The results suggest, however, that nearly a quarter of those positive results would still be missing and misdiagnose three in a thousand people as positive.
However, the tests can only be used by trained professionals, and their accuracy deteriorates dramatically if members of the public do it themselves – with an accuracy of around 58% in detecting positive cases.
Accuracy also decreases in people with only small amounts of the virus in their body, studies show, becoming more accurate as people’s viral loads increase.
Sources in the health ministry said this is unlikely to be a big deal because people with the smallest viral load were less likely to pass the virus.
The tests were evaluated under laboratory conditions and also in real-world testing centers.
Real-world testing revealed that the vast majority of people who show up have viral loads that correspond to the more specific stage of testing.
The test detected 95% or more of the 180 people who tested positive on the reference PCR tests with relatively large amounts of the virus in their bodies, while it detected only 10% of the 30 people with low levels of the virus.
Officials said the time-to-infection this test can detect is considerably shorter than a PCR test, which is over 95% accurate under ideal conditions.
Although this test can detect signs of illness as early as 10 days or more, it probably won’t work until about five days after infection.
An advantage of this, they said, would be that it would not affect people recovering from the disease and therefore less likely to be infectious.
Dr Susan Hopkins, Chief Medical Advisor for NHS Testing and Tracking, said, “These tests are proving to be accurate and reliable.
“And most importantly, they are able to detect Covid-19 in people without symptoms who may unknowingly pass the virus to others.
“Our evaluation work and ongoing pilot projects are helping us understand how lateral flow tests in the field work and how we can use them to help stop the spread of the virus.
“We are convinced that these new tests, which have been rigorously evaluated, will make a real difference in how we protect people from this disease and help break the chains of transmission.
Health Minister Lord James Bethell said, “We are absolutely committed to using the latest testing technology to make asymptomatic testing available in more areas.
“It is fitting that we have taken a two-pronged approach to evaluating this technology: piloting it in the field so that we can understand how best to make these tests available and inspiring our world-renowned academics and doctors to undertake by rigorously evaluating their ability to detect the virus.
“I am delighted that the two are already demonstrating that lateral flow testing can be the reliable and highly sensitive technology we need to help keep this virus in check and get back as close to normal as possible. ”
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