̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - testing

How mass testing helped limit the spread of COVID-19 at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

cjb250 — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 10:49:36 +0000

A combination of testing programmes for staff and students, infection control measures and genomic surveillance helped reduce the number of cases of COVID-19 at the ̽��ֱ�� and keep the wider community safe.

Cambridge institute publishes ethical framework for asymptomatic COVID-19 student testing in HE institutions

cjb250 — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 13:40:09 +0000

̽��ֱ��use of asymptomatic COVID-19 testing is accelerating in a range of UK settings, including in higher education institutions. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge introduced a weekly asymptomatic testing programme for students in College accommodation in October 2020 as part of its efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19. ̽��ֱ��programme, based on laboratory PCR tests facilitated by the national lighthouse laboratory network, involves pooling swabs from students in their households. If the pool tests positive, individual tests are performed for each participating student to investigate further.

Researchers at THIS Institute consulted students and staff at the ̽��ֱ�� on ethical issues relating to its student testing programme. Their views, combined with expert legal and ethical analysis, resulted in a new ethical framework aimed at helping higher education institutions make complex decisions about student testing programmes.

̽��ֱ��framework offers recommendations in nine areas:

Design and operation of the programme
Goals of the programme
Properties of the test
Enabling isolation
Choices regarding participation
Benefits, harms and opportunity costs
Responsibilities
Privacy, confidentiality and data protection
Communication

Professor Mary Dixon-Woods, Director of THIS Institute, said: “Higher education institutions must be certain that they can deliver asymptomatic COVID-19 testing programmes for students that are responsive to new evidence, policy and guidance, pandemic conditions, and views of their students and staff. This new ethical framework is intended to help leaders to think through whether asymptomatic COVID-19 testing is the right option for their institution, and to support good organisational decision-making around implementing testing programmes.”

Dr Caitriona Cox, NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow at THIS Institute and project lead, said: “ ̽��ֱ��framework and checklist are freely available and will hopefully act as valuable and timely resources for higher education institutions seeking ethically sound ways to keep people safe and support public health efforts.”

Supported by the Wellcome Trust, Dr Cox and colleagues consulted over 200 students and staff from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. Participants took part via an online questionnaire or interview. ̽��ֱ��consultation, conducted through Thiscovery, THIS Institute’s online research platform, gathered views about the asymptomatic COVID-19 testing programme. ̽��ֱ��consultation findings were integrated with ethical and legal analysis and expert discussion to produce an ethical framework and checklist.

̽��ֱ��framework, checklist and further information about the work is available on the THIS Institute website.

̽��ֱ��Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute has today published an ethical framework for higher education institutions considering running asymptomatic COVID-19 testing programmes for their students.

Higher education institutions must be certain that they can deliver asymptomatic COVID-19 testing programmes for students that are responsive to new evidence, policy and guidance, pandemic conditions, and views of their students and staff

Mary Dixon-Woods

Nordin Ćatić

Testing kit

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Unexpected experiences: Meet the volunteers behind the masks at the Cambridge Testing Centre

zs332 — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 08:00:36 +0000

They juggled their jobs and sacrificed sleep to volunteer at the Cambridge Testing Centre, a collaboration between the ̽��ֱ��, AstraZeneca and GSK to support the national effort to boost COVID-19 testing. They say they were simply fulfilling their duty as scientists. Meet the volunteers behind the masks.

“Behind every COVID-19 test sample is a person worried about their results”

cg605 — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 11:38:56 +0000

Meet the volunteer scientists who turn swab samples into diagnoses – again and again and again.

Combining PCR and antibody tests at point of care dramatically increases COVID-19 detection in hospitalised patients

cjb250 — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 08:02:01 +0000

Point-of-care testing – in other words, testing patients as soon as they arrive at the hospital – is essential for enabling healthcare workers to rapidly diagnose patients and direct those who test positive for infection to dedicated wards. A recent study showed that SAMBA II, a new point-of-care PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 developed by Cambridge researchers, was able to dramatically reduce time spent on COVID-19 ‘holding’ wards – allowing patients to be treated or discharged far quicker than with current lab testing set-ups.

PCR tests involve extracting a miniscule amount of RNA from the virus and copying it millions of times, creating an amount large enough to confirm presence of the virus. ̽��ֱ��virus is captured through a swab inside the nostrils and at the back of the throat. However, it can take as long as 14 days for an individual to show symptoms of COVID-19, by which time the virus may have moved away from the nose and throat and into the lungs and other tissues and organs, making it harder to detect via a swab test. As a result, studies have shown that PCR tests can miss as many as a half of infected patients five days after infection.

Antibody tests provide an alternative way of identifying infected individuals, but antibodies – molecules produced by our immune system in response to infection – generally do not appear until at least six days after infection.

Professor Ravi Gupta from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge said: “We still do not have a gold standard test for diagnosing COVID-19. This poses a challenge to healthcare workers who need to make quick and safe decisions about how and where to treat patients.

“ ̽��ֱ��two main types of test – PCR and antibody tests – both have limitations because of the nature of coronavirus infection and how our body responds. But we’ve shown that if you combine them and carry out both at point of care, their reliability can be hugely increased.”

Professor Gupta led a team that used the approach of combining rapid point-of-care PCR and antibody tests to diagnose 45 patients at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. ̽��ֱ��results of this peer-reviewed study are published in Cell Reports Medicine.

̽��ֱ��patients, each of whom had suspected moderate to severe COVID-19 disease, provided nose/throat swabs for the tests detecting nucleic acid (virus genetic material) and blood serum for antibody testing an average (median) of seven days after the onset of illness.

̽��ֱ��authors designed a gold standard reference test made of two parts, either of which could be positive to confirm COVID-19. ̽��ֱ��first part was an in vitro test where artificial SARS-CoV-2 viruses were made and mixed with serum from patients to see whether the serum contained neutralising antibodies. ̽��ֱ��second part of the gold standard was the standard Public Health England laboratory test looking for genetic viral material in nose/throat swabs. Using this gold standard, 24 of the patients had COVID-19.

Professor Gupta’s team used SAMBA II machines, developed by Cambridge spinout company Diagnostics for the Real World, for the nucleic acid tests, and a combination of two finger prick antibody tests, both of which test for antibodies against the spike protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Overall, the nucleic acid tests could identify eight out of ten patients with COVID-19, but when combined with the rapid antibody tests, 100% of the COVID-19 patients were correctly identified. Among the 21 patients who did not have COVID-19, there were four false positive results with one antibody test and only one false positive with the second antibody test, demonstrating that one performed better than the other.

“Combining point-of-care PCR and antibody testing could be a game-changer for rapidly identifying those patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 infection,” said Professor Gupta. “This could prove extremely useful, particularly in the event of a second wave arising during flu season, when it will not be immediately clear whether the patients had COVID-19 or seasonal flu.”

Professor Gupta envisages that hospitals deploying this approach would carry out a finger prick blood test and nose/throat swab at the same time on admission to hospital. ̽��ֱ��antibody test result is available within 15 minutes, but might benefit from confirmation with a second point-of-care antibody test. Importantly the study showed that the antibody tests can detect antibodies against a mutated form of SARS-CoV-2, D614G in spike protein, that has now become the dominant strain worldwide.

This approach could be particularly beneficial in low resource settings where centralised virology laboratories are scarce and the pandemic is expanding, said Professor Gupta. In addition, it removes the need for repeated nose/throat swabbing when the first test is negative and suspicion of COVID-19 is high, which may generate aerosols and lead to transmission.

̽��ֱ��research was mainly funded by Wellcome and supported by the National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and the Cambridge Clinical Trials Unit.

Reference
Micochova, P et al. Combined point of care SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid and antibody testing in suspected moderate to severe COVID-19 disease. Cell Reports Medicine; 1 Sept 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2020.100099

A Cambridge hospital has piloted the use of combined rapid point-of-care nucleic acid and antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 infection after researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge showed that this approach was superior to virus detection alone for diagnosing COVID-19 disease.

PCR and antibody tests both have limitations because of the nature of coronavirus infection and how our body responds. But we’ve shown that if you combine them and carry out both at point of care, their reliability can be hugely increased

Ravi Gupta

U.S. Pacific Fleet

Man taking COVID-19 test

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Unexpected experiences: Mike Weekes describes setting up a full-scale COVID-19 testing facility

zs332 — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 08:00:00 +0000

When infectious diseases expert Mike Weekes realised he and colleagues had know-how that could help protect staff, patients and students in a pandemic, they set up a unique testing facility – the first of its kind, they believe, in a UK university.

Testing suggests 3% of NHS hospital staff may be unknowingly infected with coronavirus

cjb250 — Tue, 12 May 2020 10:42:25 +0000

Patients admitted to NHS hospitals are now routinely screened for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and isolated if necessary. But NHS workers, including patient-facing staff on the front line, such as doctors, nurses and physiotherapists, are tested and excluded from work only if they develop symptoms of the illness. Many of them, however, may show no symptoms at all even if infected, as a new study published in the journal eLife demonstrates.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge team pro-actively swabbed and tested over 1,200 NHS staff at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, throughout April. ̽��ֱ��samples were analysed using a technique called PCR to copy and read the genetic information of material present on the swab, producing a colour change whenever the coronavirus was present in a specimen. At the same time, staff members were asked about relevant coronavirus symptoms.

Of the more than 1,000 staff members reporting fit for duty during the study period, 3% nevertheless tested positive for the coronavirus. On closer questioning, around one in five reported no symptoms, two in five had very mild symptoms that they had dismissed as inconsequential, and a further two in five reported COVID-19 symptoms that had stopped more than a week previously.

To probe routes of possible transmission of the virus through the hospital and among staff, the researchers also looked at whether rates of infection were greater among staff working in “red” areas of the hospital, those areas caring for COVID-19 patients. Despite wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), “red” area staff were three times more likely to tested positive than staff working in COVID-19 free “green” areas. It’s not clear whether this genuinely reflects greater rates of transmission from patients to staff in red areas. Staff may have instead transmitted the virus to each other or acquired it at home. Staff working in the “red” areas were also swabbed earlier in the study, closer to when the lockdown was first initiated, so the higher rates of infection in this group might just be a symptom of higher rates of virus circulating in the community at the time.

Nevertheless, extrapolating these results to the more than half a million patient-facing staff working across the NHS UK-wide suggests that as many as 15,000 workers may have been on duty and infected, with the potential to transmit the virus to co-workers, family members and patients, during the month of April. In fact, this figure could be even higher in settings where the supply of PPE has been very problematic.

̽��ֱ��implications of the new study, say senior authors Dr Mike Weekes and Professor Stephen Baker from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), are that hospitals need to be vigilant and introduce screening programmes across their workforces.

“Test! Test! Test! And then test some more,” Dr Weekes explains. “All staff need to get tested regularly for COVID-19, regardless of whether they have any sort of symptoms – this will be vital to stop infection spreading within the hospital setting.”

̽��ֱ��research was mainly funded by Wellcome and the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust.

Reference
Rivett, L, et al. Screening of healthcare workers for SARS-CoV-2 highlights the role of asymptomatic carriage in COVID-19 transmission. eLife; 11 May 2020; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58728

Hospital staff may be carrying SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 disease, without realising they are infected, according to a study by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Test! Test! Test! And then test some more

Mike Weekes

Hospital CLÍNIC

Hospital staff

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

What makes a faster typist?

sc604 — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 08:31:58 +0000

̽��ֱ��data was collected by researchers from Aalto ̽��ֱ�� in Finland and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. Volunteers from over 200 countries took the typing test, which is freely available online. Participants were asked to transcribe randomised sentences, and their accuracy and speed were assessed by the researchers.

Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that faster typists make fewer mistakes. However, they also found that the fastest typists also performed between 40 and 70 percent of keystrokes using rollover typing, in which the next key is pressed down before the previous key is lifted. ̽��ֱ��strategy is well-known in the gaming community but has not been observed in a typing study. ̽��ֱ��results will be presented later this month at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Montréal.

“Crowdsourcing experiments that allow us to analyse how people interact with computers on a large scale are instrumental for identifying solution principles for the design of next-generation user interfaces,” said study co-author Dr Per Ola Kristensson from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.

Most of our knowledge of how people type is based on studies from the typewriter era. Now, decades after the typewriter was replaced by computers, people make different types of mistakes. For example, errors where one letter is replaced by another are now more common, whereas in the typewriter era typists often added or omitted characters.

Another difference is that modern users use their hands differently. “Modern keyboards allow us to type keys with different fingers of the same hand with much less force than what was possible with typewriters,” said co-author Anna Feit from Aalto ̽��ֱ��. “This partially explains why self-taught typists using fewer than ten fingers can be as fast as touch typists, which was probably not the case in the typewriter era.”

̽��ֱ��average user in the study typed 52 words per minute, much slower than the professionally trained typists in the 70s and 80s, who typically reached 60-90 words per minute. However, performance varied largely. “ ̽��ֱ��fastest users in our study typed 120 words per minute, which is amazing given that this is a controlled study with randomised phrases,” said co-author Dr Antti Oulasvirta, also from Aalto. “Many informal tests allow users to practice the sentences, resulting in unrealistically high performance.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found that users who had previously taken a typing course actually had a similar typing behaviour as those who had never taken such a course, in terms of how fast they type, how they use their hands and the errors they make - even though they use fewer fingers.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that users display different typing styles, characterised by how they use their hands and fingers, the use of rollover, tapping speeds, and typing accuracy.

For example, some users could be classified as ‘’careless typists’’ who move their fingers quickly but have to correct many mistakes; and others as attentive error-free typists, who gain speed by moving hands and fingers in parallel, pressing the next key before the first one is released.

It is now possible to classify users’ typing behaviour based on the observed keystroke timings which does not require the storage of the text that users have typed. Such information can be useful for example for spell checkers, or to create new personalised training programmes for typing.

“You do not need to change to the touch typing system if you want to type faster,” said Feit. “A few simple exercises can help you to improve your own typing technique.”

̽��ֱ��anonymised dataset is available at the project homepage: http://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/136Mkeystrokes/

Reference:
Dhakal, V., Feit, A., Kristensson, P.O. and Oulasvirta, A. 2018. 'Observations on typing from 136 million keystrokes.' In Proceedings of the 36th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018). ACM Press.

Adapted from an Aalto ̽��ֱ�� press release.

̽��ֱ��largest-ever dataset on typing speeds and styles, based on 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 volunteers, finds that the fastest typists not only make fewer errors, but they often type the next key before the previous one has been released.

Crowdsourcing experiments that allow us to analyse how people interact with computers on a large scale are instrumental for identifying solution principles for the design of next-generation user interfaces.

Per Ola Kristensson

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash

Want to type faster?

Pay attention to errors, as they are costly to correct. Slow down to avoid them and you will be faster in the long run.
Learn to type without looking at fingers; your motor system will automatically pick up very fast ‘’trills’’ for frequently occurring letter combinations (“the”), which will speed up your typing. Being able to look at the screen while typing also allows you to quickly detect mistakes.
Practice rollover: use different fingers for successive letter keys instead of moving a single finger from one key to another. Then, when typing a letter with one finger, press the next one with the other finger.
Take an online typing test to track performance and identify weaknesses such as high error rates. Make sure that the test requires you to type new sentences so you do not over-practice the same text.
Dedicate time to practice deliberately. People may forget the good habits and relapse to less efficient ways of typing.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes