As schools reopen this week, there has been some confusion about what parents should do if their children test positive for Covid-19.

As stated in government guidance, all pupils returning to school should be given two Covid-19 tests each week. Pupils’ first three tests will be taken under supervision at their school or college. 

Thereafter, they will be sent testing kits for testing at home, which should continue to be done twice weekly. All testing will be done by lateral flow test.

But Vicky Ford, the Children’s Minister, sparked confusion when she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that any child with a positive lateral flow result should self-isolate with their families, even if a non-rapid PCR test later comes back negative. 

This was inaccurate: if a subsequent PCR test is negative, they can then return to school. The only exception is if the original lateral flow test was done under supervision in school rather than at home, as the government said this means there is only a “minimal” chance the result could be incorrect so no further tests are needed.

Ms Ford’s claim was reported by a number of newspapers, before the government clarified that this was not accurate.

The Daily Express wrongly implied that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine leads to more adverse side effects than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week.

But this is wrong. The article also mixes up two different sources of information about side effects. 

In its claim about AstraZeneca, The Express may be referring to “Yellow Card” reports which allow members of the public to report health problems following vaccination. As such, Yellow Card reports do not give a balanced picture of the side effects being experienced in the real world—because they represent suspected side effects, rather than proven ones.

If this is the case, then it is using unreliable data. As the summary to the report itself says: “Yellow card data cannot be used to derive side effect rates or compare the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccinations as many factors can influence [adverse drug reaction] reporting.”

If the Express is referring to the clinical trial data, then it has described its findings in a very misleading way. 

The AstraZeneca vaccine has “more adverse side effects than the Pfizer jab” only in the sense that the list of “very common” side effects for AstraZeneca is longer. But this doesn’t mean the side effects are more common.

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