I have spent over 30 years as a GP using scientific data to inform my decisions. The current advice on Covid-19 being issued on the NHS website is both alienating people and missing an opportunity to gain important data. My daughter is currently self-isolating with a persistent cough and instructed not to call 111, while three of her boyfriend’s family have tested positive for coronavirus.
She will not be tested, which worries her, but more importantly no one is recording this event. Without this type of information, how can the rate of spread or the percentages progressing to severe or fatal illness be calculated?
A simple website linked to the NHS advice page, to register that you are self-isolating, with a few questions on demographics and symptoms, would be better than nothing. Without data there is no science and without scientific evidence medicine is at best just a guess.
Dr Jeremy Lockwood
Chale Green, Isle of Wight
• The government’s decision to stop testing people with mild symptoms for coronavirus seems shortsighted. Surely it is useful to know whether individuals have the virus, however mild? In our school of 550 pupils, on Tuesday this week we had 147 absent, 50 of them displaying flu-like symptoms, with the remainder self-isolating because they were not sure whether they had been exposed to Covid-19. In any school there are many children with illnesses that compromise their immunity who are being put at risk because they do not know if they need to self-isolate. There are members of staff in their late 50s and 60s or with underlying health problems to be considered too.
Last week the government said the NHS would get whatever it needed to cope with coronavirus; more testing should be on the shopping list.
Elizabeth Atwell
Deputy head, Kew House school, west London
