Health Minister tells councils to make testing referrals – local authorities ‘struggle’ to fill spaces due to specific criteria

The Health Minister has criticised some local authorities for not putting forward enough people to be tested, however councils are not happy with the ‘limiting’ criteria for tests, with claims referrals have been ‘rejected’.

Wrexham.com understands that local authorities have to meet a fixed eligibility criteria to put a name forward for COVID-19 testing. That includes the person working in a eligible area and be an eligible worker themselves, with a further requirement that the person has current COVID-19 symptoms.

Staffing areas can include residential and nursing homes, care workers or those involved in safeguarding. Specific worker roles can include front line care staff, catering and cleaning staff in care homes and critical social workers.

North Wales testing is done locally in Wrexham however the samples taken are currently sent to Cardiff for processing, meaning the overall process can take three days or more if it is over a weekend.

Councils could put someone forward if they have the now familiar set of coronavirus symptoms, however there are concerns that for example a small team of domiciliary care workers could not be screened if say three our of four of them do not show symptoms of the virus, that itself can be asymptomatic.

We are told that some councils have had names submitted for testing ‘rejected’ and ‘struggle to fill’ the testing application allocations due to the criteria as being ‘too restrictive’.

Speaking on the topic today the Health Minister Vaughan Gething said, “Our tests are available for social care staff who need to be tested. I am concerned that we are not always using all of the tests available. It is important to me that we don’t just increase the capacity of testing available in Wales, but we maximise the use of the capacity that exists.

“I have instructed my officials to work with Public Health Wales to look again at the procedures in place to ensure that people can get the test they need as quickly as possible.

“It is really important that local authorities put forward the names of social care staff who need a test so that a test can be provided.”

“I know, for example, that 12 local authorities have referred in their social care workers to have tests. But actually, every local authority can make use of that and we have the ability to test over a couple of hundred social care workers each day.

“That means those referrals need to be made to make sure the test can be undertaken. So every part of the system needs to act and refer in their frontline staff to make sure the testing capacity is used.

“My frustration is I am sure borne out and multiplied by frontline staff who are waiting and self isolating at home, who think if they had a test, that they will be able to understand if they’re COVID free and be able to return to work.”

“We need a much, much greater use of the capacity to exist on a much more consistent basis.”

When asked ‘what went wrong in the intervening period’ between the pledge of up to 9,000 tests a day and now, the Minister said that the current capacity in Wales is ‘about 1,300’ tests a day and further capacity details will be provided ‘through this week’.

The Minister said he wished to be ‘really clear, upfront and honest’ about the situation, “We have capacity that is not used, because we haven’t had all the referrals in we need to make use of that capacity. I would much rather be in a position where referrals are coming in and we have a modest backlog to work through rather than not having enough referrals to come in.”