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UK's second test scandal: In April, UK paid millions to China for tests that didn’t work. In March, UK purchased tests that were tainted with virus.…
4/16/20, “U.K. Paid $20 Million for New Coronavirus Tests. They Didn’t Work.“ NY Times, David D. Kirkpatrick, Jane Bradley, London…(Print ed., 4/, Section A, Page 1, NY ed., headline: “Britain Bets On Test Kits, And It Loses.”)
“Facing a global scramble for materials, British officials bought millions of unproven kits from China in a gamble that became an embarrassment.”
“The two Chinese companies were offering a risky proposition: two million home test kits said to detect antibodies for the coronavirus for at least $20 million, take it or leave it.
The asking price was high, the technology was unproven and the money had to be paid upfront. And the buyer would be required to pick up the crate loads of test kits from a facility in China.
Yet British officials took the deal, according to a senior civil servant involved, then confidently promised tests would be available at pharmacies in as little as two weeks. “As simple as a pregnancy test,” gushed Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “It has the potential to be a total game changer.”
There was one problem, however. The tests did not work.
Found to be insufficiently accurate by a laboratory at Oxford University, half a million of the tests are now gathering dust in storage. Another 1.5 million bought at a similar price from other sources have also gone unused. The fiasco has left embarrassed British officials scrambling to get back at least some of the money.
Found to be insufficiently accurate by a laboratory at Oxford University, half a million of the tests are now gathering dust in storage. Another 1.5 million bought at a similar price from other sources have also gone unused. The fiasco has left embarrassed British officials scrambling to get back at least some of the money.
“They might perhaps have slightly jumped the gun,” said Prof. Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London, a member of the government’s “New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group.” “There is a huge pressure on politicians to come out and say things that are positive.” [UK Professor Neil Ferguson is also a member of this “advisory group.” Ferguson is the “expert” who advised US and UK to follow China’s lead on the virus: “There’s really no option but to follow in China’s footsteps and suppress.”…Trump, like a good puppet, agreed: “Trump initially praised China’s response to the outbreak.” Reuters]
A spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care said that the government had ordered the smallest number of tests allowed by the sellers and that it would try to recover the money, without specifying how….
The still-emerging tests for antibodies formed in response to the virus are the next stage in the battle. By enabling public health officials to assess where the disease has spread and who might have some immunity, widespread use of the tests is seen as a [allegedly] critical step in determining how and when to lift the lockdowns currently paralyzing societies and economies….
“You [allegedly] can’t lift the lockdown as long as you are not testing massively,” said Nicolas Locker, a professor of virology at the University of Surrey. “As long as the government is not testing in the community, we are [allegedly] going to be on lockdown.”
The gamble on the Chinese antibody tests, though, is also a barometer of the desperation [bumbling] British officials felt as public pressure has [rightly] mounted over their slow response to the virus.”…
(continuing): “One prominent expert, Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, a British nonprofit that is a major funder of medical research, recently warned that “the U.K. is likely to be certainly one of the worst, if not the worst affected, country in Europe.” [That makes sense. UK “expert” advised the country to follow China’’s plan: “There’s really no option but to follow in China’s footsteps and suppress,” per UK “expert” Ferguson]
Long before the development of an antibody test, Germany, for example, the continent’s leader in containing the virus, began conducting as many as 50,000 diagnostic tests a day to help trace and isolate cases. That rate is now nearly 120,000 a day.
As of Wednesday, Britain was still conducting less than 20,000 diagnostic tests a day. Having missed a previous target
of 25,000 diagnostic tests a day by the middle of April, officials are
now promising to reach 100,000 a day by the end of the month and as many
as 250,000 a day soon after that….
So when the Chinese offers of antibody tests arrived, the officials knew that almost every government in the world was hunting for them, too….Medical companies in China, where the virus first emerged, seemed to hold all the cards, typically demanding yes-or-no decisions from buyers with full payment upfront in as little as 24 hours.
The two Chinese companies offering the antibody tests, AllTest Biotech and Wondfo Biotech, both said their products met the health, safety and environmental standards set by the European Union. Public health officials reviewed the specifications on paper while the British Foreign Ministry hurriedly dispatched diplomats in China to ensure the companies existed and to examine their products.
Representatives of both AllTest and Wondfo declined to discuss prices.
Within days of the deal, enthusiastic health officials back in London were promising that the new tests would vault Britain into the vanguard of international efforts to combat the virus.
Appearing on March 25 before a parliamentary committee, Sharon Peacock, a professor of public health and microbiology at Cambridge University who is the senior public health official overseeing infectious diseases, testified that the tests would require only a pin prick in the privacy of one’s home and would soon be available at minimal cost from either local pharmacies or Amazon.
“Testing the test is a small matter,” Prof. Peacock assured lawmakers. “I anticipate that it would be done by the end of this week.”
After quietly admitting last week that the testing had in fact proven unsuccessful, health officials are now defending the purchase as prudent planning and valuable experience.
[This wasn’t “first out of the gate” for you. This is the second test scam you’ve fallen for: 3/30/20, UK “Coronavirus testing effort hampered by kits contaminated with Covid-19,” UK Telegraph, Bill Gardner, Harry Yorke…”UK test kits contaminated, weeks added to lockdown as new kits will take weeks.”]
(continuing): “But Greg Clark, the chairman of a parliamentary committee examining the coronavirus response, said the government’s promises appeared unrealistic.”…
[Ed. note: Correct: With no
assurance whatsoever that it would soon have millions of working tests
on hand and the means to administer them, UK imprisoned its population
informing them that they’d never be free again until the government obtained something it didn’t have and had no assurance that it ever would have]
(continuing): ““There is no country in the world that is able to operate in massive scale antibody tests yet,” he said in an interview.
“I think it’s now clear,” he added, “that we should have moved earlier and more expansively to make use of all of the testing facilities that we could have.” [Fine, but what is your plan now?]
After British complaints about the test kits surfaced, both Chinese companies blamed British officials and politicians for misunderstanding or exaggerating the utility of the tests. Wondfo told Global Times,
a Chinese newspaper, that its product was intended only as a supplement
for patients who had already tested positive for the virus.
AllTest said in a statement on its website that the tests were “only used by professionals,” not by patients at home.
Doctors say the government’s descriptions of the antibody tests could also be misleading….A discernible level of antibodies may not appear in the blood until as long as 20 days after infection—meaning a person with the virus would test negative until then.
The British military laboratory at Porton Down is also working on an antibody test, but primarily to help public health officials assess the course of the pandemic by surveying samples of the population, not to inform individual patients….
Do-it-yourself pinprick tests like the ones the British government ordered from China are far more complicated and much further off
than such laboratory tests, researchers say. It is not yet certain what
degree of immunity recovery from a past infection may confer, either.
Rapid antibody tests “have limited utility” for patients, the World Health Organization warned in an April 8 statement, telling doctors that such tests remained unfit for clinical purposes until they were proved to be accurate and effective. British officials, though, were eager for a breakthrough.”…
[Ed. note: “Officials” wanted a “breakthrough?” These “officials” capriciously jailed millions of people and told them they’d never be free again until their jailers obtained something that doesn’t exist in the UK or any country: millions of working tests and personnel able to correctly administer them to millions of people. UK citizens should sue their government and the monarchy for slavery and crimes against humanity]
(continuing): “To make up the shortfall,
academic research laboratories have sought to convert themselves into
small-scale clinical testing facilities, typically focusing on the needs of local hospitals….
Cancer Research UK, a nonprofit organization, is converting its research laboratories to conduct as many as 2,000 tests a day. But its capacity has been limited to a few hundred because of difficulty and delays in obtaining scarce materials, said Prof. Charles Swanton, its chief clinical officer.
Even the swabs used to obtain samples had turned out to be scarce,
he said, and his laboratory ultimately agreed to pay a Chinese supplier
as much as $6 a swab — about 100 tedimes the typical cost. “It took
about 10 days to get them,” Professor Swanton added.
The British division of the drug giant AstraZeneca began setting up a testing facility last month for its own essential workers, said Mene Pangalos, the executive overseeing the effort. But at the request of the British government, AstraZeneca and its rival drug company GlaxoSmithKline have teamed up to repurpose a laboratory at Cambridge University to carry out as many as 30,000 diagnostic tests a day by the beginning of May.
AstraZeneca hopes to develop
a laboratory test for antibodies, too, Mr. Pangalos said. But that will
take until at least the middle of next month, and a home-based test,
such as the British government tried to order, would take much longer,
he added.
“Everyone is overpromising at the moment,” he said. “I don’t want to overpromise.””
Added: 4/6/20 UK Telegraph article on above Chinese antibody test scam bought by UK “officials” with millions of tax dollars:
April 6, 2020, “Government seeks refund for millions of coronavirus antibody tests,“ UK Telegraph, Bill Gardner, Amy Jones
“Ministers will attempt to recoup taxpayers’ money after Oxford University trial found the tests returned inaccurate results”
“The Government will look for a refund for millions of coronavirus tests ordered from China after scientists found they were too unreliable to be used by the public.
Ministers will attempt to recoup taxpayers’ money spent on the fingerprick tests after an Oxford University trial found they returned inaccurate results.
The failure is a significant setback because it had been hoped the antibody tests would show who had already built up immunity, therefore offering a swifter route out of lockdown.
On March 25, Dr Sharon Peacock, from Public Health England (PHE), hailed fingerprick tests as a “game-changer” and suggested they would be available to the public within days.
But Professor Sir John Bell, from Oxford University, who advises the Government on life sciences, said on Monday that disappointing trials meant a mass antibody test was now at least a month away. He said no country in the world had yet rolled out a reliable antibody testing programme.
“Sadly, the tests we have looked at to date have not performed well,” he wrote in a blog post entitled ‘Trouble in testing land’.
“We see many false negatives (tests where no antibody is detected despite the fact we know it is there) and we also see false positives.
“None of the tests we have validated would meet the criteria for a good test as agreed with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). This is not a good result for test suppliers or for us.”
Last month, the Government ordered 3.5 million fingerprick tests, mainly from Chinese manufacturers, and later placed provisional orders for 17.5 million tests from nine firms including some based in the UK. None of the tests were found by Oxford to be reliable enough for mass use.
Sources said the Government would now work with the manufacturers to improve reliability, but Prof Bell suggested it could be time to go back to the drawing board and work to develop a test from scratch.
“There is a point in evaluating these first-generation tests where we need to stop and consider our options,” he said, adding that the search was on for a test sensitive and specific enough to mean it could be taken at home.
“That should be achievable, and the Government will be working with suppliers both new and old to try and deliver this result so we can scale up antibody testing for the British public,” he said. “This will take at least a month.”
Ministers reportedly spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on the initial order of 3.5 million tests from two Chinese manufacturers, Wondfo and AllTest, which already have EU approval for use.
Last month, the Spanish government withdrew 58,000 Chinese-made coronavirus testing kits from use after it emerged that they had an accurate detection rate of just 30 per cent.
At Monday’s Downing Street press conference, Professor Chris Whitty said he was “not surprised” that the tests had been found to be unreliable, describing it as the “first pass”.
He added that the antibody tests would be more useful towards the end of the epidemic, when antibodies had been given time to develop and would be more easily detected. Ultimately, samples may need to be processed in NHS labs rather than at home, he added.
Professor John Newton, of PHE, who was appointed to oversee testing last week, said on Monday that the Chinese tests had failed to detect antibodies in patients who had suffered only mild symptoms.
“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,” he said.
It was claimed over the weekend that ministers also risk losing an opportunity to buy 400,000 tests a week from South Korean manufacturers because an offer had been ignored by officials.
Downing Street said it would seek refunds from companies that cannot improve the failed tests.
“We continue to work with the testing companies – we’re in a constant dialogue with them and we give feedback to them when their products fail to meet the required standards,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said. “If the tests don’t work then the orders that we placed will be cancelled and, wherever possible, we will recover the costs.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are currently working with several companies who are offering these tests and are evaluating their effectiveness.
“The Covid Scientific Advisory Panel, led by Professor Sir John Bell, is currently undertaking a rapid evaluation process to establish their reliability. We will publish the results of this evaluation once it is completed.”
“We continue to work with the testing companies – we’re in a constant dialogue with them and we give feedback to them when their products fail to meet the required standards,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said. “If the tests don’t work then the orders that we placed will be cancelled and, wherever possible, we will recover the costs.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are currently working with several companies who are offering these tests and are evaluating their effectiveness.
“The Covid Scientific Advisory Panel, led by Professor Sir John Bell, is currently undertaking a rapid evaluation process to establish their reliability. We will publish the results of this evaluation once it is completed.”
“Members’ Biographies”
“Neil Ferguson is director of the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Modelling Methodology. He uses mathematical and statistical models to investigate the processes shaping infectious disease pathogenesis, evolution and transmission. His recent work has focused on the use of models as contingency planning tools for emerging human infections (notably Ebola and pandemic influenza), bioterrorist threats and livestock outbreaks, though he also undertakes research on the dynamics and control of vector-borne diseases (dengue, yellow fever and malaria) and pathogen evolution. He was educated at Oxford University where he also undertook postdoctoral research, then held a readership at the University of Nottingham before moving to Imperial College. Professor Ferguson is a Senior Investigator of the National Institute of Health Research, a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and received an OBE for his work on the 2001 UK foot and mouth disease epidemic. Prof Ferguson advises the UK and US governments, WHO and the EU on emerging infections and modelling.”
“Neil Ferguson is director of the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Modelling Methodology. He uses mathematical and statistical models to investigate the processes shaping infectious disease pathogenesis, evolution and transmission. His recent work has focused on the use of models as contingency planning tools for emerging human infections (notably Ebola and pandemic influenza), bioterrorist threats and livestock outbreaks, though he also undertakes research on the dynamics and control of vector-borne diseases (dengue, yellow fever and malaria) and pathogen evolution. He was educated at Oxford University where he also undertook postdoctoral research, then held a readership at the University of Nottingham before moving to Imperial College. Professor Ferguson is a Senior Investigator of the National Institute of Health Research, a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and received an OBE for his work on the 2001 UK foot and mouth disease epidemic. Prof Ferguson advises the UK and US governments, WHO and the EU on emerging infections and modelling.”
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Added: US and UK are both pretend countries and should be closed down:
“A thorough reappraisal of our “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and exposure of its activities to the detriment of the US is imperative.”…10/13/2018, “Britain on the Leash with the United States-but at Which End?” James George Jatras, Strategic Culture
Added: US and UK are both pretend countries and should be closed down:
“A thorough reappraisal of our “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and exposure of its activities to the detriment of the US is imperative.”…10/13/2018, “Britain on the Leash with the United States-but at Which End?” James George Jatras, Strategic Culture
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