OTOH, people aren't going to self-isolate every time they or someone they know gets a bit of a cough or cold all winter. They'll chance it. Without tests, nobody will follow the advice because in the majority of cases it'll be a huge overreaction, especially if there's not enough financial and wellbeing support for repeated fortnights of isolation.shpalman wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:16 pmItaly does as of about now, and more and more countries either already do or will have soon, as they have to re-prioritise who to test as the number of symptomatic cases rises.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:01 pmIn terms of cases missed by government testing, I've just been reading on the Uni of East Anglia's covid page:So at least under those circumstances (young people living together - cases are amongst students rather than staff) the government testing scheme seems to be missing about 75% of cases. Seeing as the current wave appears to be more amongst those age cohorts, this does rather suggest that the UK's official figures are a mahoosive underestimate. Do many other countries have a policy of no-asymptomatic-testing?UEA is actively encouraging staff and students to undertake asymptomatic testing to identify cases and make campus safer for everyone and is working in partnership with the Earlham Institute (EI) on the Norwich Research Park to do this as part of the Norwich Testing Initiative (NTI). Our own testing initiative scheme, working in partnership with the EI, has helped to identify more than three quarters of the students who have tested positive on campus, which demonstrates the importance of testing and making campus safer for everyone.
Tests undertaken via the NTI are collected Monday to Friday, with tests collected on a Friday processed into Saturday. There are then no more NTI tests processed until the Monday collection, which will mean lower results reported for Sunday and Monday.
...
As spread becomes more "community" and everything but the essentials gets locked down, knowing whether your mild symptoms are covid or not becomes less and less useful since the advice to self-isolate is the same and there isn't much hope or use in tracing everyone's contacts.
If anything, it's the mild and asymptomatic cases that need the tests. Obvious covid symptoms mean you need isolation. Mild/no symptoms might not.