UK coronavirus outbreak is slowing and antibody test could be ready in days, says top scientist
The coronavirus epidemic in the United Kingdom is showing signs of slowing and antibody tests for the disease could be ready in days, a top epidemiologist has said.
“We think the epidemic is just about slowing in the UK right now,” Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, told the BBC today.
Ferguson said a third or even 40 per cent of people with Covid-19 do not get any symptoms, and that two to three per cent of the United Kingdom’s population may have been infected, but added that the data was not yet good enough to make extrapolations.
The scientist said that antibody tests, which would determine whether people had had coronavirus in the past rather than just if they were currently infected, were in the final stage of validation.
The tests could be ready to use “days rather than weeks”, Ferguson said.
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When asked whether the test would be ready in days, junior health minister Helen Whately told the BBC: “I am not going to confirm when that’s going to arrive.”
Britain has begun rolling out antigen tests — which are different to antibody tests, and determine if a person is currently infected with the virus — for healthcare workers but the numbers being tested are far below the levels of Germany, Europe’s largest economy.
Whately said there was capacity to have 10,000 people a day tested, but that 7,000 were tested yesterday.
She added that the government hoped to reach to 25,000 tests per day over the next few weeks.