TY - JOUR T1 - Experience of a novel community testing programme for COVID-19 in London: Lessons learnt JF - Clinical Medicine JO - Clin Med DO - 10.7861/clinmed.2020-0436 SP - clinmed.2020-0436 AU - Gabriel Wallis AU - Francesca Siracusa AU - Michael Blank AU - Helena Painter AU - Javier Sanchez AU - Kelcy Salinas AU - Cherifer Mamuyac AU - Cindy Marudamuthu AU - Fenella Wrigley AU - Tumena Corrah AU - Tommy Rampling AU - Sarah Logan AU - Anna Goodman AU - Deborah Miller AU - Bhanu Williams AU - Alastair McGregor AU - Victoria Parris AU - Gurjinder Sandhu AU - Laurence John AU - Padmasayee Papineni AU - Ashley Whittington Y1 - 2020/07/17 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/early/2020/07/17/clinmed.2020-0436.abstract N2 - We describe the London community testing programme developed for COVID-19, audit its effectiveness and report patient acceptability and patient adherence to isolation guidance, based upon a survey conducted with participants. Any patients meeting the Public Health England (PHE) case definition for COVID-19 who did not require hospital admission were eligible for community testing. 2,053 patients with suspected COVID-19 were tested in the community between January and March 2020. Of those tested, 75 (3.6%) were positive. 88% of patients that completed a patient survey felt safe and 82% agreed that community testing was preferable to hospital admission. 97% were able to remain within their own home during the isolation period but just 41% were able to reliably isolate from other members of their household.The London community testing programme allowed widespread testing for COVID-19 while minimising patient transport, hospital admissions and staff exposures. Community testing was acceptable to patients and preferable to admission to hospital. Patients were able to reliably isolate in their home but not from household contacts. The authors believe in the importance, feasibility and acceptability of community testing for COVID-19 as a part of a package of interventions to mitigate a second wave of infection. ER -