PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Coronavirus: Screening (15 December 2020)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to remove inaccurate data from its decision making where a significant number of false positives are found within a covid-19 testing centre.

Asked by:
Esther McVey (Conservative)

The current tests are very specific and the risk of false positives where the test is reacting to other viruses is extremely low. Independent, confirmatory testing of positive samples indicates a test specificity that exceeds 99.3% or a false positive rate of 1% and additional guidance has been provided to laboratories to reduce the rate even further.

Answered by:
Helen Whately (Conservative)
28 January 2021