Rochdale Borough Council has issued advice to care homes to not use lateral flow tests in order to allow people to see family members in care homes.
Chief Executive of Rochdale Council, Steve Rumbelow, expressed concerns in the meeting of Greater Manchester’s emergency Covid committee, where he said that the new lateral flow tests can sometimes fail to detect Coronavirus and therefore expose vulnerable people inadvertently.
There was also been anxiety raised regarding how the tests are carried out. The tests are being administered on-site by care home staff, as opposed to being sent off to a laboratory and carried out under expert supervision, potentially leading to more inaccurate test results.
Rumbelow said the council’s decision to wait to use the new tests would ensure that residents and their families are
He added: “These tests might be much-hailed, but we have serious concerns about how effective they will be, particularly as they seem to show an unacceptably high risk of missing the virus.
“We have been working with colleagues across Greater Manchester to put in place a safe testing regime, along with support for care homes, in the delivery of what is a complex process.”
With lateral flow tests being deployed to care homes across the country, Rochdale Council believe that potentially inaccurate tests are simply not worth the risk to resident safety.
