Coronavirus test kits that were to be sent to the United Kingdom were found to be contaminated with COVID-19, The Telegraph reports.
This comes at a time when the UK is ramping up efforts to boost testing in the country. The country has reached out to private companies to help make tests.
The Government claims there is currently a capacity to carry out 11,000 tests a day, while the aim is to carry out 25,000 tests per day by mid-April.
Last week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said 3.5 million antibody tests have been ordered, while Britain has been sourcing kits from private companies to help meet demand.
Luxembourg-based manufacturer Eurofins told UK officials that deliveries would be delayed because core parts were contaminated with the virus.
The delay is not expected to significantly impact the country’s testing for the virus.
A spokesperson for Eurofins told the Telegraph: ‘In rare occasions, delays in some orders may occur if based on Eurofins Genomics stringent quality and environmental control procedures, manufacturing of a product may not meet the quality or purity criteria set by Eurofins Genomics. ‘We are aware that contaminations of the nature you mentioned have been observed by several primers and probes manufacturers around the world after they produced SARS-COV2 positive controls. ‘Those initial problems can be easily resolved by proper cleaning and production segregation procedures.’
The UK is under increased pressure to test more people to get ahead of the coronavirus pandemic. But Tony Blair has warned that ‘virtually everybody’ in the UK would need to be tested multiple times. ‘Your risk, obviously, is as you start to ease the lockdown, how do you then deal with any resurgence of the disease? This, of course, is what they’re now dealing with in China and South Korea, and elsewhere,’ he told Sky News on Sunday.
