A public health chief has appealed to the people of Milton Keynes to protect the “precious resource” of coronavirus tests by only trying to book one if they have symptoms.
Dr Oliver Mytton, the city’s deputy director of public health, told a meeting yesterday (Wednesday) that the number of tests has remained between 200 and 450 each day but demand has rocketed.
But he also revealed that public health experts are lobbying the Government to get many more tests in the city as they gear up for winter.
Dr Mytton anticipates that MK could need a “four fold” increase during the winter when up to 2,500 people a day could be experiencing “covid-like symptoms”.
“If people have got symptoms they must get tested,” said Dr Mytton at the health and adult care scrutiny committee.
“No symptoms of covid, please do not get tested because we need to limit those precious resources on those who really need tests. ”
The committee was told that the UK currently lacks laboratory processing capacity but that is being dealt with.
Dr Mytton also advised people with symptoms to “persevere” with the system if they could not book a test slot.
“People are able to get tests, and tests are being constantly added,” he said. He added that the problem of people being sent long distances for tests had been “largely ironed out”.
In an update to the committee he said that MK is seeing 50 cases each week which gives an incidence of 20 per 100,000, which is currently classified as “low risk”.
But he expects the increase to continue as the infection has now spread widely across the community from young people into the wider population, including young children.
Black and ethnic minorities are also reported to be more likely to have covid.
“We would like to do more testing here,” he said. “It is controlled centrally.”
But he said tests are currently being prioritised in other areas of the country where the infection rate is much higher.
“We are currently making the case for why we need more testing here, because we do, and we will keep making that case but that unfortunately is the situation that we are in.”
Dr Mytton said during a typical winter some 2,500 people “would be having” covid-like symptoms of a persistent cough, fever, loss of smell or a change in taste.
“Perhaps it is looking like 2,000 to 3,000 tests a day may be the need that we would have, but that is a very back of the envelope figure that we put together, so about a four fold scaling up.”
