Millions of coronavirus antibody testing kits England has received from China are faulty, according to the country's public health coronavirus testing coordinator John Bell.
That's added to a list of countries who've grown weary of malfunctioning coronavirus testing supplies sent from China.
Last month, the British government bought 3.5 million antibody tests from China, according to The Daily Telegraph.
"We see many false negatives and we also see false positives," Bell wrote in a blog post. "...This is not a good result for test suppliers or for us."
The tests are supposed to detect anyone who's developed immunity to coronavirus, which could allow them to safely return to life in public without fear of contracting the disease.
Government officials are relying heavily on these antibody tests to help get essential employees back to work.
John Newton, who's in charge of ramping up testing in the country, said the antibody tests sent from China could only accurately detect immunity in people with severe illness.
“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,” Newton told the Times of London.
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