‘False negative’ fears at Oxford's coronavirus testing site

Concerns have been raised over a lack of medical staff on site to administer throat and nasal swab tests at the Thornhill Park and Ride facility, which opened fully on Saturday.

Serco, which runs the site for the Department of Health and Social Care but does undetake testing, however, has defended the facility.

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In a series of posts on Twitter, which have been shared thousands of times, a mother talked about her son’s experience using the centre on Saturday. She wrote: “You’ll all know my son is recovering from Covid-19, still with symptoms, so still having to self isolate with his partner.

"Both frontline public service employees. My son’s partner is wanted back at work, so a test was arranged for her today at a site run by Serco.”

She said they had a 30 minute slot and arrived on time but had to wait another 90 minutes with ‘no staff to administer the tests’ and the instructions read out by an employee to the couple, which they ‘did their best’ to follow.

Self-testing instruction at Thornhill

She added: “They saw people panicking, trying to do tests on their loved ones they had no idea how to do.”

She described the situation as ‘scandalous’ adding it was ‘a catalogue of ineptitude, failure and a shambolic lack of care’.

Her tweets prompted a personal response from the chief executive of Serco, Rupert Soames, who wrote he was ‘sorry’ the couple were ‘dissatisfied’, adding they had visited on the first day and ‘people and processes were bedding in’ but he was proud they had gone from zero to 700 tests in three days.

The mother asked why there aren’t medically-qualified people doing the tests and in a reply he tweeted: “Oxford offers both ‘assisted’ tests with qualified people doing the necessary; or self-administered, where you sit in the car and DIY. If assisted are short of people, it’s DIY.”

A woman who works in a care home in Oxford also went for a test at Thornhill on Monday.

The 52-year-old, who did not want to be named, said she had not found it busy ‘which was a relief’ but despite not being confident about doing the throat and nasal swab herself there was ‘no option’ for her to have it administered.

She described the instructions as ‘clear as mud’ adding: “It was intimidating and I had no faith I would get an accurate result.”

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She said she has since tested positive for coronavirus but worries other people may make a mistake doing it themselves or be ‘put off’ by the idea.

She added: "Risk of cross contamination of the samples is high and the procedure is not easy.

"There will be a lot of false negatives from this process."

A Serco spokesperson said: “The Oxford testing site has been extremely busy. We are working hard to get people tested and through the centre as quickly as possible. To help us manage the number of cars, we ask that people with tests booked arrive at their allotted time.”

A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Our aim as we tackle this virus is to make it easy, fast and simple for any essential worker who needs a test to get a test.

“In addition to setting up a nationwide network of drive in testing sites, we have introduced home testing kit delivery, deployed mobile testing units operated by the Armed Forces, and built three new ‘mega labs’ to analyse test samples.

“This is in addition to more than doubling the capacity of the NHS and Public Health England laboratories, all in a matter of weeks. 569,768 people have now been tested in the UK, and the vast majority report no issues with the process. We are determined to ensure that everyone who needs a test can get one.”