- Aug 6, 2012
- 28,953
- 25,802
- 2,405
I guess you get what you pay for. Governments should not be trying to cut corners with vital medical equipment. How many other lives before this virus have been impacted?
Britain joins growing chorus of countries furious with China's faulty coronavirus equipment
Britain has become the latest country to cry foul about the quality of China's coronavirus test kits and equipment after the ones the country purchased were deemed too unreliable.
Since the outbreak began, China has been accused of multiple cover-ups and deliberately lying about its coronavirus infection and death rates. Beijing has tried to rebrand itself on the international stage as a leader in tackling the virus but the drumbeat of complaints has been getting louder in recent days and the faulty kits, delivered to the likes of Britain, Spain and the Netherlands, is only exacerbating the problem.
In a blog post on Monday, John Bell, the coordinator of coronavirus testing for Public Health England, said that none of England's 17 million antibody kits -- including the ones bought from China -- have performed well.
"We see many false negatives and we also see false positives," he wrote. "...This is not a good result for test suppliers or for us."
He added that the antibody tests bought had only able to identify immunity accurately in people who had been severely ill. The antibody tests will be crucial in helping essential workers get back to work.
Ideally, the finger-prick tests would be able to confirm who had already built up immunity to COVID-19 and perhaps let them leave lockdown and return to work.
John Newton, Britain’s new testing chief, told the Times of London that the antibody tests from China were not good enough because they were only able to identify immunity accurately on people who had been severely ill.
“The test developed in China was validated against patients who were severely ill with a very large viral load, generating a large amount of antibodies . . . whereas we want to use the test in the context of a wider range of levels of infection including people who are quite mildly infected. So for our purposes, we need a test that performs better than some of these other tests.”
Britain joins growing chorus of countries furious with China's faulty coronavirus equipment
Britain has become the latest country to cry foul about the quality of China's coronavirus test kits and equipment after the ones the country purchased were deemed too unreliable.
Since the outbreak began, China has been accused of multiple cover-ups and deliberately lying about its coronavirus infection and death rates. Beijing has tried to rebrand itself on the international stage as a leader in tackling the virus but the drumbeat of complaints has been getting louder in recent days and the faulty kits, delivered to the likes of Britain, Spain and the Netherlands, is only exacerbating the problem.
In a blog post on Monday, John Bell, the coordinator of coronavirus testing for Public Health England, said that none of England's 17 million antibody kits -- including the ones bought from China -- have performed well.
"We see many false negatives and we also see false positives," he wrote. "...This is not a good result for test suppliers or for us."
He added that the antibody tests bought had only able to identify immunity accurately in people who had been severely ill. The antibody tests will be crucial in helping essential workers get back to work.
Ideally, the finger-prick tests would be able to confirm who had already built up immunity to COVID-19 and perhaps let them leave lockdown and return to work.
John Newton, Britain’s new testing chief, told the Times of London that the antibody tests from China were not good enough because they were only able to identify immunity accurately on people who had been severely ill.
“The test developed in China was validated against patients who were severely ill with a very large viral load, generating a large amount of antibodies . . . whereas we want to use the test in the context of a wider range of levels of infection including people who are quite mildly infected. So for our purposes, we need a test that performs better than some of these other tests.”
