Misinformation has been one of the central problems in dealing with the current coronavirus pandemic...while no-one has been drinking bleach in the UK that we know of, there's plenty of other misconceptions doing the rounds on social media.
As experts agree that we are at the start of a second wave of coronavirus, Salford Public Health department has produced a myth busting Q and A guide. Here we print some extracts...
Face coverings...
Q: Where is the evidence that Face Coverings work?
A: Face coverings tend to protect other people as they shorten the distance the virus travels after passing through cloth layers. If the virus lands on the outside of your cloth covering, you will most certainly breathe it in. This is why the face coverings protect others more than the wearer.
Q: If the coverings carry COVID-19 why aren't we providing biohazard bins?
A: We are asking people to put their face coverings in a sealed plastic bag away from other people and take them home with them to wash. We do not want to create or encourage waste from disposable masks.
Q: If they do work, why weren't they used from the start of the pandemic?
A: They were introduced as businesses and transport were reopened.
GM restrictions...
Q: Why can schools go back and mix children from different households, but we can't have visitors to our homes and the children can't see grandparents?
A: Children are less likely to transmit the virus and child-to-child transmission in schools is uncommon. It is the adult behaviour which drives transmission, and the level of community transmission outside school.
Schools are managed settings where school bubbles are clear the bubbles help us identify the contacts who may have the virus if someone tests positive. The restrictions are stopping the virus from passing from household to household for people who do not live with you so the virus does not circulate among your close friends and family (and we want to protect older people who do not live with you especially if they have health conditions).
Q: The restrictions are having no effect so why bother?
A: Those who think they may have the virus must stay at home. That is the fastest way out of restrictions. Community testing is important to find the positives. We are not trying to find the negatives because a negative test today could be positive tomorrow. By isolating people who have the virus and their close contacts, we are stopping the virus from passing on to other people and other groups.
Q: The only people who are adversely impacted by the spread of COVID-19 are those at the end of their lives or with underlying conditions
A: That is right but you have passed it on to someone who passed it on to them by passing on the virus just to one person, you don't know if they will pass it on to hundreds (and you and they will all have contributed to the deaths). We have seen a single positive person infect 16 others and needing to isolate more than 140 people.
COVID-19 is life threatening to people as we saw in the first wave. Sadly, we have seen deaths again - as the virus has moved from the first person to the second and now to the third who are older and more vulnerable. We know this because of the increasing numbers from mid-July and the older ages now testing positive the way the virus spreads is exponential, so you see doubling and tripling of cases and so on.
Q: You advocate the restrictions, but you let protests take place
A: Everyone has a right to peaceful protest under the human rights act and only the home secretary can intervene to restrict a protest. Under the COVID19 new rule of 6 there are a list of exemptions. Peaceful protest is listed as one of the exemptions.
Cases and data...
Q: People are stating cases are increasing because testing is increasing
A: Testing is increasing because more people are getting the symptoms. If we are finding everyone with the virus, then we expect the proportion testing positive to fall as we increase testing. In reality we are now finding more than 7 people positive for every 100 tests. In July we were only finding 2 or 3 in every 100 tests. This means there are more people with the virus than we can find. This is not a good position because it means the virus is not visible. We believe we are only finding half the cases with the virus.
Q: Why are you not counting the negative tests as well as the positive tests?
A: We are counting the negative and positive results. This is how we know the number of people who test positive for every 100 tests. We are contacting the positive cases so we can track and trace and contain the virus. We do not follow up the negative tests. If someone is really unwell, they need to call 111 or their own GP.
Q: Why are you not counting the people who had coronavirus and recovered?
A: We do not count the numbers of people with symptoms because they do not all come forward for a test. Everyone who has had the virus and has not died has recovered even though there may be long term health effects this information about an individual is within their GP record, and it is not published.
Testing...
Q: The PCR tests are fraudulent they pick up other viruses such as the common cold.
A: The PCR tests are very specific to this virus. They do not pick up other viruses. The PCR is the way we use to tell which virus is which.
Q: The PCR tests are fraudulent they pick up old dead coronavirus.
A: Some people continue to test positive for some time. We make sure we wait for at least six weeks before we say this person has a new infection. We also check if they previously tested negative twice, then this is a new infection.
Q: The PCR tests are fraudulent they pick up old dead coronavirus which is not infectious.
A: This is a new virus. We believe people are infectious at the start of their illness and 48 hours before they develop symptoms. We have also found people getting ill with this virus again and this means they can infect other people again.
Q: The PCR tests are fraudulent they are not accurate 100% of the time.
A: The PCR test is the standard way to detect the virus and it should pick up the virus unless the swab was not taken correctly, or it was after the 5 day window when the person already fought off the virus. That is why if someone is not tested early enough, we still ask them to isolate for 10 days.
General...
Q If there are few people going to hospital and dying, then this is not a serious disease. Why are you making it look scary? Why don't you want us to get back to normal?
A: COVID related hospital admissions remain very low - new admissions who test positive started to increase from 2 to 3 per day. There are people in intensive care with coronavirus in Salford. Sadly we have had six confirmed COVID related deaths in Salford in this second wave (as of 16 Sept 2020).
We are saying to people, 'Don't think it's mild because it hasn't affected you enough to go into hospital. You're just a transmitter, you're just a carrier. The next person on from you, or the next person on from them, that happened because you didn't stop it when it came to you'. That's why we're saying 'Remember you're the carrier, you're the transmitter and protect everyone else'...
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