Better late than never I suppose. Tonight’s episode of Panorama – Undercover: Inside the Covid Testing Lab – reveals that staff at the Lighthouse Lab in Milton Keynes have been cutting corners and processing samples in a way that could lead to cross-contamination between test samples. Readers will recall that Lockdown Sceptics published an expose of the very same lab – “Heath and Safety Breaches at the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab” – by an ex-member of staff in November of last year. BBC News has more.
A BBC reporter working as a lab technician, filmed staff cutting corners and processing samples in a way that could cause contamination.
This means some people who had taken a test via NHS Test and Trace may have received no result or a wrong result.
The lab said it had followed all necessary rules and regulations.
Evidence at the lab captured on film shows:
* Checks to ensure samples could be identified, were rushed, meaning tests were sometimes discarded unnecessarily
* Some test samples “glooped” across an area where other samples had been placed, risking contamination
* Swabs used by people to take Covid tests were left in their tubes when processed, presenting a further contamination risk
* A quality control scientist telling the reporter that the quality of the results progressively got worse throughout the day
The findings have led experts to question the way the lab was operating.
The story on BBC News uses the phrase “potential contamination”, but, incredibly, does not use the phrase “false positives”, as if the contamination could be in both directions, with some positive becoming false negatives after being contaminated with material from negative test swabs. Obviously, that isn’t possible. The contamination is all in one direction – negative samples being contaminated with material from positive swabs, thereby becoming false positives.
What this Panorama story tells us is that the number of cases reported by PHE in England during the pandemic, which is partly based on the findings of Lighthouse Labs like the one in Milton Keynes, has been inflated thanks to cross-contamination in the labs.
The BBC story is worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Dr Martin Evison, a retired Professor of Forensic and Biological Anthropology and occasional contributor to Lockdown Sceptics, has been in touch to comment on the BBC News story.
I don’t suppose this ‘news’ from the BBC will come as news to anyone who has worked on the PCR analysis of trace samples. It is exactly what one would expect from rushed high volume mass testing with limited and secretive verification.
The BBC article still hasn’t mentioned a key issue in relation to contamination – that is, the use of negative ‘blank’ controls. These should be included at key points in RNA extraction and analysis to establish that purification and PCR steps, test plates, manual or automated liquid handling and so on are free of intrusive SARS-CoV-2 RNA or derived DNA contamination. Blanks should be run regularly to measure background contamination in the laboratory or production line.
I made a futile attempt to find out what controls were being used via an FOI request some months ago, but didn’t get very far.
Judging by the article, it seems a decision was made just to accept an unknown amount of contamination for the sake of throughput in a way that would be unacceptable in forensic work, for example.
It does leave one wondering how much SARS-CoV-2 infection is really circulating when the positive test levels drop to their minimum and whether contamination could also be contributing to mis-classification of non-covid fatalities.
It’s interesting that this seems to be the first really critical and detailed science-related article the BBC have posted on the Government response to COVID. Why only now?
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Panodrama is a bit of a joke, as we’ve seen in 2019. They’ve been shown to fabricate and distort facts to fit their narrative. They’re corrupt to the core. But what do you expect? They’re owned by the BBC. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Please ensure a copy of the LS piece by Julian Harris is sent to Panorama Director/Editor Joe Plomin and theyir boss.
Off topic, The Sun YouTube 2 hours ago.
‘Boris Johnson warns there WILL be more deaths as lockdown eases, we must prepare our defences . . .’
Sun readers are now as off message as the Daily Mail bozo, your days are numbered you facist twat.
Funny no mention of false positives in the BBC report. As pointed out above, cross contamination can only be one way. I’m sure if they could have figured in false negatives they would, but surely people couldn’t be that stupid?
Exactly – this story is actually a diversion from the real story, which is that the whole testing regime is utterly flawed. This is just a turd on the sewage.
You’re talking about Biased Broadcasting Corporation journalists, so it’s not so much stupidity as a total lack of analytical ability on scientific matters, viz Harrabin their Environmental ‘expert’
Industrialisation of screening is the largest driver of this pandemic. Not people, not a virus, but a testing regime which has for a long time appeared to be nothing but a key tool in a wider psychological operation in justifying lockdown.
To name but a few.
The only question is whether this has been one big rear guard action by the regime who got bounced into Lockdown by ICL or whether there is an even more nefarious agenda at play.
Another big issue is the lack of independent auditing of the testing process. The private labs I have come across have the PCR test process they use accredited to ISO 17025 – i.e the test procedure has been audited against a standard operating procedure, however the Lighthouse Labs do not. In any other field of analysis, results of such an uncontrolled test process would be used with caution!
Not “used with caution”, more like ignored
Never mind labs. We do this in any business. It stinks that it’s not done here. “Because we’re in a pandemic” seems to be the excuse for everything
I’m going with a more nefarious agenda at play.
You’d almost think they were paid a bonus for positive tests
I thought, we the tax payer put a lot of money into this? I’d like to see the successful ITT document from the tenderer to our government
Plagiarism is the highest form of praise.
I imagine that in the edit it probably went something like – slightly dramatic music.. ” resulting in false positives”
No, scratch that, can we pump up the drama and go with ” possible contamination”..it sounds more, you know, simpler to understand.
Yes, I remember LDS reporting this.
Look out for further devastating revelations (old news to us) when the BBC finally notices that the Great Covid Lie is tottering, and starts shifting to the opposite side. Peddling lies and terror porn? Wasn’t us, guv.
We were onto the false positive issue in the forum in September here. https://forums.lockdownsceptics.org/viewtopic.php?p=1603#p1603. One contributor wrote: “OK, i’m just a builder from Walthamstow, albeit with a hard earned o level in English language (i’m quite the exponant) and a couple of cse in woodwork and metalwork, and all this talk is way above my pay grade. But i have to ask. Why ain’t you lot advising the morons at Westminster?
Looks like it was all our fault, then.
Over a year later and I haven’t known of anyone that’s had Covid and I’m expected to have an injection? I don’t think so. (shakes head).
I know exactly one person, i.e. a care workers at my mum’s care home, who was “shielding” and caught it anyway. She’s recovered and said she wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I didn’t get time to get more details,and I have no idea how it compares with a bad flu.
Here as in several other areas we had far more people who had a suspiciously covid-like illness between October 2019 and February 2020 than “official” covid cases, self included, and I don’t normally catch stuff. It wasn’t pleasant but most of us survived thanks to having an immune system.
We had a “case” in an old folks home but she had no symptoms and no-one else caught it so almost certainly a false positive.
I overheard a nurse talking about how “they were dropping like flies” presumably in a care home, and likely after the flu vaccine or even the covid vaccine.
In the outside world not so much, I saw the first ambulance in the street for ages. I recall other years where there were more ambulances than buses going up the road and lots of deaths but then there are a LOT of people aged netween 80 and 108 and it just happens. A neighbour told me there have been three recent deaths but none from covid, basically just from old age though if any of them had been tested or hospitalised for long they would have gone on the count
I know of two people that died ‘from/with’ covid. One was aged 85 and the other 105 (no, not Tom, well before that). I also know of 3 people who committed suicide because of the MSM-promoted fear, and another failed attempt (school age daughter of my sister’s friend).
https://tomwoods.com/ep-1862-ivor-cummins-answers-forbidden-covid-questions/?omhide=true
Dispatches uncover serious failings at one of UK’s largest COVID-Testing Labs…16th November 2020. Did mention False Positives, still completely ignored by the authorities, fingers in ears singing lalalala it will go away if we ignore it. Will they take any notice of this? They haven’t to date. It doesn’t suit the narrative. They’ve saved us from an apocalypse of course. Down to 19 deaths out of 60 odd million population, we are “on track” to be allowed out to play again. They’re generously, very slowly, “easing restrictions”.”Boris announced that in England groups of six can meet up to socialise but stressed the need for caution. However, there are concerns minorities in the UK are not taking the vaccine. France and Italy are experiencing a third wave of infections in hospitals and schools.” “Irreversible but cautious path back to normality.” “Holidays abroad are not yet permitted but MAY be allowed this Summer.” “Testing continues on how effective vaccines are against key variants.” “France and Italy are experiencing a third wave of infections in hospitals and schools.” 19 deaths? and we don’t know how many of those were correctly labelled as COVID deaths, or loosely / potentially related to COVID deaths at… Read more »
This scandal has been conveniently ignored by governments, scientists, politicians and journalists for months. I have no doubt that this ignorance will continue, and this story, like any others highlighting fraud and corruption, will simply disappear into the ether. Maybe someone will suggest it sees the light of day at a public inquiry but I’ll not hold my breath.
It is not entirely correct to dismiss the possibility of a positive test becoming a false negative. If enough material from a negative sample is transferred, it will dilute the positive sample whereby more cycles of amplification will be required for it to flag up as positive. Depending on the threshold set, this could lead to it being flagged negative.
For anyone who would like an extra piece of trivia as to why contamination only works one way (in case logic fails!). All samples will have DNA/RNA in them, but the PCR procedure involves adding primers to your samples that match the sequence that you’re looking for. Any sample that contains the relevant section of DNA/RNA will use the primers to amplify over the heating-cooling cycles, these amplified fragments will then be stained with fluorescent dyes for detection. Any sample that doesn’t have the sequence that matches the primers doesn’t amplify. Therefore, a piece of covid RNA can contaminate any sample it comes into contact with (because all samples are given the covid primers) while a sample without covid RNA can be mixed with another without affecting the original outcome (because nothing amplifies unless it matches the primer). I have some sympathy with the lab staff, I hated doing PCR, it used to take me 1.5 days just to run one 96 well plate using the old system of running gels and staining with the carcinogenic ethidium bromide, and it was a thoroughly tedious, multi-stage, pain in the ass that used to work sometimes! Nevertheless, they have a responsibility to… Read more »