A private clinic is offering £375 coronavirus tests for the public and businesses as Public Health England (PHE) and the NHS restrict testing to only high-risk groups.
The Private Harley Street Clinic, said it was offering testing for Covid-19 from Friday to anyone who suspected they might have the virus but did not fit PHE’s criteria for testing.
The clinic says that results from the test, which also covers nine other respiratory viruses, will be available in five days. It has not been approved by PHE and the clinic said it should be treated only as “pre-screening”.
The World Health Organization is recommending that people take simple precautions to reduce exposure to and transmission of the coronavirus, for which there is no specific cure or vaccine.
The UN agency advises people to:
- Frequently wash their hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or warm water and soap
- Cover their mouth and nose with a flexed elbow or tissue when sneezing or coughing
- Avoid close contact with anyone who has a fever or cough
- Seek early medical help if they have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, and share their travel history with healthcare providers
- Advice about face masks varies. Wearing them while out and about may offer some protection against both spreading and catching the virus via coughs and sneezes, but it is not a cast-iron guarantee of protection
Many countries are now enforcing or recommending curfews or lockdowns. Check with your local authorities for up-to-date information about the situation in your area.
In the UK, NHS advice is that anyone with symptoms should stay at home for at least 7 days.
If you live with other people, they should stay at home for at least 14 days, to avoid spreading the infection outside the home.
Dr Mark Ali, chief executive and medical director of the clinic, said he decided to offer private tests after being inundated with requests from people who had been refused testing after calling the NHS 111 helpline.
Ali said dozens of people had asked for testing and some businesses have requested the clinic test all their employees. “So far about 75 individuals and two to three large corporations, including one of the big consultancy firms, have asked for the test,” Ali said on Friday. “We have capacity to do all these tests.”
PHE has only been providing coronavirus testing to individuals displaying full symptoms of the virus after returning from a high-risk country such as China and Italy, or being exposed to someone with the virus.
On Thursday, Boris Johnson and the UK’s chief medical and scientific advisers told a press conference people would no longer be tested if they are showing mild symptoms. Instead, those with the most serious symptoms will be tested in hospital, and the NHS will move into a phase of prioritising the most seriously ill.
PHE has the capacity to test 1,500 people a day, although it is ramping up capacity to 10,000 tests daily. “Approximately 1,500 tests are being processed every day at PHE labs with the great majority of tests being turned around within 24 hours,” PHE said on Wednesday. It said PHE had processed more than 25,000 tests as of 10 March and had not exceeded capacity,
A PHE spokeswoman said: “As we now transition into the ‘delay’ phase, we will prioritise tests for those who require hospital care for pneumonia or acute respiratory illness – while continuing to investigate outbreaks.
“Most adults in good health who develop symptoms will fully recover, and the chief medical officer has advised that it is not necessary for them to be tested. However, to protect the most vulnerable they should stay at home for seven days to reduce the spread in the community.”
PHE said the agency was working with a number of commercial companies to validate tests for use and it was working to develop a blood test. But none of these have yet been validated.
Ali said he had not sought approval from PHE in advance of offering the private testing. He said all private test results would be shared immediately with PHE so that the spread of the disease can be monitored, and patients can be treated according to NHS guidelines. Ali said offering private tests may take some of the strain off the NHS, and could help identify positive cases that might have been missed otherwise.
Prof Sharon Peacock, director of the National Infection Service, PHE, said: “Wider testing is important as it will help to manage demand as the number of people being tested increases in the coming weeks. This will ensure that PHE and the NHS have the most robust system possible to understand what is happening with the virus.
“PHE has continued to process the vast majority of test results within 24 hours of receiving the sample in a PHE laboratory and returning them to NHS colleagues and will continue to do so.”
PHE added that: “As more people come forward to be tested, the NHS is now scaling up tests by 500%, with NHS England asking expert NHS laboratory services across the country to bring new capacity online, and other labs to begin checks, enabling 8,000 more samples to be analysed every day of the week.”
Ali stressed that the private test, which tests for Covid-19 alongside nine other viruses including Sars, Mers and Influenza A and B, should not be considered as a replacement test for the NHS test. “It should be considered a pre-screening test which, if found to be positive for Covid-19, the client would then be integrated into the NHS clinical management process,” he said.
The clinic’s website says that the test is posted to the client’s home or preferred address, where the client takes swabs from both the nostrils and throat and the sample is then tested at a private laboratory in the UK.
• This article was amended on 18 March 2020 to make it clear that the Private Harley Street Clinic is not The Harley Street Clinic, part of HCA UK . It was further amended because an earlier version was incorrect to say that samples will be taken at the clinic. On 22 March a note was added to the standfirst directing readers to a later article about Dr Mark Ali.
