Luton to be part of rapid 30-minute coronavirus testing scheme - including for asymptomatic people

The lateral flow tests can provide results in 30 minutes and are “accurate and sensitive enough to be used in the community", according to the government.

The town's role was explained to the borough council's health and well-being board by the council's interim director of public health, Lucy Hubber.

"The great thing about these tests is that they're for asymptomatic people," she said.

"We can offer our whole community the opportunity to have asymptomatic tests. That's incredibly important.

"The rapid tests are going to potentially significantly increase the number of cases we identify."

She told the board that education sites are starting to see the same increases in positive Covid-19 tests as elsewhere.

"We still haven't had a significant outbreak in a school," she added. "And we're almost alone in not having had that now.

"What we're seeing is a large number of cases and a large number of children being asked to self-isolate.

"So we're working closely with schools to ensure staff and pupils are safe.

"School is a very safe place in Luton for children to go, and for preventing greater harm in the long-term for children's well-being and their life chances."

Consultant at Luton & Dunstable Hospital, David Kirby said: "We currently have 32 positive in-patients on the Luton site, of whom seven are in critical care.

"And we have 91 on the Bedford site, almost three times as many patients, but zero in critical care, so the local variance is significant.

"The general state of background health of the people in Luton critical care is considerably poorer than the patients who're not on critical care, which is also true for Bedford."

Mr Kirby described how the two hospitals were the biggest contributor to a recovery trial in the east of England.

"The result of that is we've got firm data on how to improve chances of survival and how to reduce length of stay," he added.

"There are ways of ventilating patients which at the beginning of the pandemic were thought unhelpful and inappropriate, based on data coming out of Europe.

"We rapidly learned that's not the case and we've changed our way of dealing with that.

"And the other is the dexamethasone steroid we're now giving people as soon as they arrive at the hospital, rather than several days later while in intensive care."

Director of clinical transformation at the BLMK Clinical Commissioning Groups and Luton GP Dr Nina Pearson, added: "It's heartening to hear the success stories we have in a very difficult environment.

"The message is there's more we can do now to improve survival than we knew about in March."