The total number of people in the UK who died with or from the coronavirus may never be known due to the lack of testing and the numbers self-isolating alone without medical supervision, a coroner has warned.
The Office of National Statistics also issued guidance to doctors last week enabling them to report COVID-19 as a cause of death on the death certificate if they believe it to be the case, whether because a test, symptoms or other clinical factors indicate this. “In the circumstances of there being no swab [test] it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement,” the ONS said.
“The tests are designed and verified for living people as you would expect,” he said. “So, [with] the use in the deceased you'd have to be careful how you interpreted the result. I'm not saying that you can't use it, but it's been developed for living people. So whilst it may be a useful test, you can't necessarily interpret as much from it or use it as extensively as you might do in the living.
“As the viral load decreases over time, the likelihood of the test being positive or the results being as reliable — or it being as easy to interpret the results — probably decreases.” He stressed that more work would need to be done on those who have died to understand the picture better. Organisations such as Public Health England, do not necessarily need to know the total number for policy purposes, Osborn said, and “are happy that other methods they have of plotting and knowing the data about the outbreak are available from other sources without necessarily having to screen all the deceased”.
Health secretary Matt Hancock announced on Thursday that the UK would be carrying out 100,000 tests a day by the end of April, but this includes both the antigen tests, which establish whether someone has the virus now, and antibody tests, which establish whether they previously had it.The decision not to test after all deaths where coronavirus is suspected but not tested for while alive, is a resultseveral factors, Osborn said.
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