Coronavirus crisis: Medical watchdog warns over ‘rogue’ test kit sales

The Medical and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said lives were at risk from unauthorised kits after seeing the findings of our investigation on Friday. Last week Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty was among many scientists cautioning that wrong results could mean Britons spreading the virus. He said: “One thing worse than no test is a bad test.”

Kits – priced from £24.95 to £310 – are sold by reputable services, others simply linked to PO boxes. In many, users do their own swabs then post them back for testing. We highlighted nucleic acid tests, marketed as “high detection efficiency”, but which may have a 70 percent false result rate, and kits with a CE European safety certification.

The MHRA says these are “likely to be fraudulent”.

Official tests for NHS frontliners are to be trialled this weekend.

Source: Read Full Article