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Students will return to campuses in January using massive tests of the kind to be implemented next month before going home for Christmas during a travel period, the university minister said.
There will be a mass exodus on staggered exit dates set by universities from December 3-9 after England’s four-week shutdown, according to plans announced by the Department of Education (DfE) on Tuesday night.
Students who test positive must be in isolation for 10 days.
But Universities Minister Michelle Donelan sought to downplay concerns raised by experts about the reliability of the plan’s self-administered lateral flow tests (LFTs) and the short time frame in which the tests will be conducted.
LFTs, which can give a result in as little as 30 minutes, are fast but don’t necessarily detect as many infected people as the PCR tests used on NHS sites, cautioned Dr. Ellen Brooks Pollock, professor of infectious disease modeling at the University of Bristol, who has conducted research on Covid-19 among students.
“Although a positive test is a good indicator of infection, a negative test does not guarantee that you are not infected, so you could have a lower viral load or be in an earlier or later stage of infection,” he told the Today show of the BBC.
“We saw high infection rates in college students at the beginning of the trimester and that number has dropped, but we can’t really disentangle the behavior of the tests from the actual infection rate. It is because most students do not have the typical symptoms of Covid, so there could be high rates of undisclosed infections, which obviously poses a risk to their parents and grandparents, but also to spread infections in new areas. ” .
Professor Jacqui Ramagge, executive dean of science at Durham University who has been overseeing a pilot project there for rapid tests for Covid-19, added that the danger of not detecting students who could later become infectious could be mitigated by taking a series of tests over a few days.
When asked about this, Donelan replied, “So that’s not correct in terms of this rapid lateral flow test that we have. It is very trustworthy. The number of false positives or false negatives is extremely low and, as I said, our plan outlined today is not dependent on testing. That is complementary to the plan. That is an additional element. “
But he also went on during a round of broadcast interviews to admit that the risks couldn’t be eliminated, telling Sky News: “We are in the middle of a pandemic. What we are talking about here is managing and reducing that risk. “
The plan calls for a week of testing between November 30 and December 6, ending a few days after the closure in England ends. In a major change, the government has also said it will also instruct universities to then move learning online before December 9 so that students can have the option of returning home to study from there.
Donelan also provided a bit more clarity on the post-Christmas arrangements, confirming that the students would be returning to campus.
“We will return to the students in January, as is our current plan, using the tests,” he told the BBC.
Talks in every part of the UK continue between government officials and universities who have been seeking guarantees on funding and protection from being sued before committing to the plans.
Donelan added: “Our target will be for those universities that have had higher infection rates or areas that have higher R rates, also areas that have higher percentages of most vulnerable. [people] like BAME, but central to this plan is that the four weeks of national restrictions mean that the risk these students pose is now greatly reduced, thus opening up the opportunity to go home and feel much more secure doing so. “
