1. Confirmation that all reported cases of SARS-COV2 in your Trust have been diagnosed and confirmed by PCR test;
2. If not with a PCR test, provide details of what method was employed to confirm the presence of SARS-COV2;
3. Details of the laboratories performing the PCR tests producing the confirmation of SARS-COV2 on behalf of your Trust;
4. Details of the Ct thesholds currently employed in the PCR tests performed by the labs at 3.;
5. Details of the Ct thresholds used to confirm all reported cases of SARS-COV2 in your Trust between 01/01/2020 and 18/12/2020;
6. Details of the manufacturers of the PCR tests used to confirm the presence of SARS-COV2 in your Trust;
7. In the document “Understanding cycle threshold (Ct) in SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR” published on the UK government website, page 7 includes the statement “Some commercial RT-PCR techniques are closed ‘black box’ systems whereby the operator cannot observe the reaction in real-time and the result is interpreted by software into a qualitative non-interrogatable positive or negative result.”
a. Please confirm which manufacturers have been engaged that employ such a ‘black box’ method,
b. which labs have used such a manufacturer, and
c. which results confirming the presence of SARS-COV2 in the UK have been based on such techniques;
8. Where such results have been produced using the ‘black box’ method, please describe what further action was taken to confirm the results produced by the ‘black box’ method.