Testing disruption leaves UK ‘flying blind’ over scale of omicron wave

‘Omicron is a serious ‘sprinter’ – I doubt we will be able to keep up from now on in terms of having precise estimates of the prevalence in the community’

A lack of Covid tests has left the government “flying blind” over the scale of the omicron wave as it tries to calculate whether further restrictions will be needed, The Independent has been told.

Senior sources from across Whitehall said that disruption to the supply of PCR tests and rapid lateral flow devices – after a policy of daily tests for Covid contacts was announced – would leave decision-makers lacking vital data.

Amid warnings that omicron will cause a “significant increase” in hospital admissions and up to 1 million infections by the end of the month, it remains unclear how widespread the new variant is across Britain, after the UK’s Health Security Agency estimated that 200,000 people were infected on Monday.

On Tuesday Nicola Sturgeon asked Scots to limit their socialising to three households before and after Christmas to help combat the spread of the variant – although she stressed she was not introducing legal rules at this stage. In England, the government has denied that it is preparing to put a new crop of measures in place, but a Whitehall official told The Independent there was “a general feeling that things are going to get worse in terms of restrictions”.

The i newspaper reported on Tuesday night that possible contingency plans are being studied within government. It said among restrictions being considered are the return of the "bubbles" system, although it said Boris Johnson is opposed to this policy.

Social distancing and mask wearing in all hospitality settings could also be among the measures considered before Christmas, the paper said.

During a virtual cabinet meeting held on Tuesday, Prof Chris Whitty told ministers “it remained too early to say how severe the omicron variant was but that we can expect a significant increase in hospitalisations as cases increase”.

Earlier, Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at UKHSA, told a parliamentary select committee that the number of daily omicron infections could reach 1 million by the end of the month, adding that the variant’s growth rate was speeding up, rather than slowing down. She also told the Science and Technology Committee that “some level” of restrictions will likely be needed until February.

The stark messages came as almost 60,000 new Covid-19 cases were reported in the UK, the highest total since 9 January, driven by the surge in the highly transmissible variant.

Efforts to determine the true scale of infections have been exacerbated by testing complications, sources believe, as for the second day running, people were unable to order lateral flow devices, while parts of the country were also hit by a shortage of PCR tests, which are more accurate in detecting Covid.

One senior government source said “ministers want more data, but there are limits, and those limits have been further stretched by supply disruptions”.

A total of 409,602 PCR tests were conducted on Monday (AFP/Getty)

The disruption to online supplies of lateral flow tests means many people who likely needed PCR test might not have been prompted to get one, the senior government source said.

Ensuring the right people have PCR tests is critical to building up the most accurate picture of the rate of the spread of the omicron variant, they said, adding that officials were “flying blind” at the moment. The data from PCR tests is also crucial for working out what restrictions are needed, they added.

“There’s a clear risk of [the government] flying blind. The sheer pace of infections and the inability to test at the same rate as demand are making it incredibly hard to get a clear picture here.”

A member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), a sub-committee of Sage, agreed, adding: “LFD can’t tell the difference between variants. [But] it’s the PCR reaching capacity that is more worrying for that. There was always a chance that capacity would be reached, but [it’s] sad that it’s as a new variant comes through.”

Issues in data collection could have also knock-on effects for determining when hospitalisations will start to ramp up, the government source added. “There’s also pace to consider, as data-gathering in order to have a clear point of NHS collapse may take longer than we can afford to wait.”

One member of SPI-M said rates of infection in the community “were anywhere between 50 per cent higher, and three times as much might be reasonable, depending on what you believe about the use of lateral flow tests.”

A total of 409,602 PCR tests were conducted on Monday, with capacity at 830,552. If the UK does reach 1 million daily infections by the end of the month, it’s unlikely the country’s testing system will be able to detect them all.

Professor Irene Petersen, an epidemiologist at University College London, said: “Omicron is a serious ‘sprinter’ – I doubt we will be able to keep up from now on in terms of having precise estimates of the prevalence in the community.”

Professor Steven Riley, director general for data, analytics and surveillance at UKHSA, said Britain’s “very high levels of infection are time limited”, but cautioned that is was difficult to predict the “speed with which we actually peak”.

“If the exponential growth continues for very much longer than we'll expect other processes to come into play and we wouldn't necessarily expect it to be a very rapid epidemic,” he said.