The rapid mass testing strategy costing just £1 a day per child can get children back to school and economies up and running, according to experts.
That is the small price of the rapid mass testing across schools in the UK, which is also hard on the heels of one of the world’s swiftest and most successful vaccination programmes.
A double whammy of rapid testing and vaccine deployment applied internationally could lead to a reduction of the human and economic hardship caused by much-criticised lockdown strategies, as well as the continued failure of ‘Track and Trace,’ which has swallowed up £32 billion in the UK.
The UK Government’s investment in vaccines started early, but its equally far-sighted adoption of inexpensive lateral flow test (LFT) kits is less well known.
The economical LFT utilizes nanoparticles to detect virus fragments in a test sample, identifying whether a subject is SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic within 30 minutes. An individual can immediately isolate after a positive test, preventing transmission of COVID-19 at a rapid pace.
Some early scepticism about the devices has since been overwhelmed by new data and a robust rebuttal from Dr Susan Hopkins, COVID-19 Strategic Response Director to Public Health England, who said:
“Up to one in three people who have coronavirus never show any symptoms (asymptomatic) but that does not mean they are not infectious. Using LFTs enables us to rapidly identify people in the population who are asymptomatic, with results produced in 30 minutes.
“Lateral flow devices are effective at finding people with high viral loads who are most infectious and most likely to transmit the virus to others.”
And she added that the latest data suggested LFTs “are at least 99.9% specific which means that the risk of false positives is extremely low – less than one in a thousand.”
UK Government-sponsored LFT use in workplaces is already widespread, with nearly 50,000 UK businesses already registered for free kits, so that employees can be tested at least twice a week with fast results, enabling them to return to work and their children to get back into the classroom.
Each pupil must take two tests (£3.50 each) a week to show whether they need to be taken out of class to avoid infecting others and the same approach will be used for parents in the workplace.
“That’s remarkable value-for-money. £1 a day for an ‘insurance policy’ to enable schools to open, mums and dads to properly return to work, and the country to accelerate out of lockdown with the re-opening of hospitality and major venues no longer a distant prospect,” said Paul Sheedy, Co-founder of the not-for-profit World Nano Foundation (WNF) that promotes healthcare innovation and believes mass testing kits using nanotechnology are central to future pandemic protection.
Image Credit: Nano
Post by Amanda Scott, NA CEO. Follow her on twitter @tantriclens
Thanks to Heinz V. Hoenen. Follow him on twitter: @HeinzVHoenen
News
Molecular Manufacturing: The Future of Nanomedicine – New book from Frank Boehm
This book explores the revolutionary potential of atomically precise manufacturing technologies to transform global healthcare, as well as practically every other sector across society. This forward-thinking volume examines how envisaged Factory@Home systems might enable the cost-effective [...]
New Book! NanoMedical Brain/Cloud Interface – Explorations and Implications
New book from Frank Boehm, NanoappsMedical Inc Founder: This book explores the future hypothetical possibility that the cerebral cortex of the human brain might be seamlessly, safely, and securely connected with the Cloud via [...]
Global Health Care Equivalency in the Age of Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Artificial Intelligence
A new book by Frank Boehm, NanoappsMedical Inc. Founder. This groundbreaking volume explores the vision of a Global Health Care Equivalency (GHCE) system powered by artificial intelligence and quantum computing technologies, operating on secure [...]
Miller School Researchers Pioneer Nanovanilloid-Based Brain Cooling for Traumatic Injury
A multidisciplinary team at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has developed a breakthrough nanodrug platform that may prove beneficial for rapid, targeted therapeutic hypothermia after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Their work, published in ACS [...]
COVID-19 still claims more than 100,000 US lives each year
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers report national estimates of 43.6 million COVID-19-associated illnesses and 101,300 deaths in the US during October 2022 to September 2023, plus 33.0 million illnesses and 100,800 deaths [...]
Nanomedicine in 2026: Experts Predict the Year Ahead
Progress in nanomedicine is almost as fast as the science is small. Over the last year, we've seen an abundance of headlines covering medical R&D at the nanoscale: polymer-coated nanoparticles targeting ovarian cancer, Albumin recruiting nanoparticles for [...]
Lipid nanoparticles could unlock access for millions of autoimmune patients
Capstan Therapeutics scientists demonstrate that lipid nanoparticles can engineer CAR T cells within the body without laboratory cell manufacturing and ex vivo expansion. The method using targeted lipid nanoparticles (tLNPs) is designed to deliver [...]
The Brain’s Strange Way of Computing Could Explain Consciousness
Consciousness may emerge not from code, but from the way living brains physically compute. Discussions about consciousness often stall between two deeply rooted viewpoints. One is computational functionalism, which holds that cognition can be [...]
First breathing ‘lung-on-chip’ developed using genetically identical cells
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and AlveoliX have developed the first human lung-on-chip model using stem cells taken from only one person. These chips simulate breathing motions and lung disease in an individual, [...]
Cell Membranes May Act Like Tiny Power Generators
Living cells may generate electricity through the natural motion of their membranes. These fast electrical signals could play a role in how cells communicate and sense their surroundings. Scientists have proposed a new theoretical [...]
This Viral RNA Structure Could Lead to a Universal Antiviral Drug
Researchers identify a shared RNA-protein interaction that could lead to broad-spectrum antiviral treatments for enteroviruses. A new study from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), published in Nature Communications, explains how enteroviruses begin reproducing [...]
New study suggests a way to rejuvenate the immune system
Stimulating the liver to produce some of the signals of the thymus can reverse age-related declines in T-cell populations and enhance response to vaccination. As people age, their immune system function declines. T cell [...]
Nerve Damage Can Disrupt Immunity Across the Entire Body
A single nerve injury can quietly reshape the immune system across the entire body. Preclinical research from McGill University suggests that nerve injuries may lead to long-lasting changes in the immune system, and these [...]
Fake Science Is Growing Faster Than Legitimate Research, New Study Warns
New research reveals organized networks linking paper mills, intermediaries, and compromised academic journals Organized scientific fraud is becoming increasingly common, ranging from fabricated research to the buying and selling of authorship and citations, according [...]
Scientists Unlock a New Way to Hear the Brain’s Hidden Language
Scientists can finally hear the brain’s quietest messages—unlocking the hidden code behind how neurons think, decide, and remember. Scientists have created a new protein that can capture the incoming chemical signals received by brain [...]
Does being infected or vaccinated first influence COVID-19 immunity?
A new study analyzing the immune response to COVID-19 in a Catalan cohort of health workers sheds light on an important question: does it matter whether a person was first infected or first vaccinated? [...]
