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Spain's capital has stopped using a rapid Covid-19 test kit made by a Chinese company after an extensive research suggested that the said test kit does not provide accurate and reliable results.
Testing done in Spain's capital has hit a hitch, because of unreliable Chinese coronavirus test kits for COVID-19. It suggests that the Chinese company who was responsible for manufacturing the kits was not thorough in the process of making them.
According to reports, most of the results were not accurate, as the Spanish count has risen considerably on Thursday with 56,188 to 4,089 deaths. Not adding the worldwide total of 542,385 cases and 24,368 death toll.
The specialists from the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC), a top Castillan research institution, reported on its website that the nose swabs developed by Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology were only accurate at less than 30%.
The El País Spanish paper said that the Madrid City government stopped using the Bioeasy kits, and requested the health ministry for replacements for the defective kits as demand.
Sources mentioned that the central government has procured 340,000 test kits from the biotech firm.
Zhu Hai, manager of Bioeasy was offering no more comments from the Spanish reports,"I'm not clear about the situation. I still haven't seen the report [from Spain], so I'd need to find out more about it."
One of the complaints with the test kits is that it was supposed to be accurate to 80%, but the rapid test kit according to El País was not correlating to SEIMC's findings.
Samples used for the test are taken from the nasopharynx, which is located near the base of the skull.
Next step is diluting the samples and placing it inside a cartridge with a strip inside, the strip will indicate if the result is either positive, negative, and invalid. This antigen test can have results in 10 to 15 minutes.
A Professor Leo Poon Lit-man from the University of Hong Kong's medical faculty mentioned that claiming an 80% accuracy for using nasal swabs was doubtful and a test like it is full of inaccuracies.
Last Thursday, the Chinese embassy tweeted that the Bioeasy test kits were not approved by the National Medical Products Administration, neither included in the medical supplies sent to Spain either. Thereby disavowing any knowledge about the test kits procured by the Spanish administration.
Sources reported that a list of approved supplies of medical supplies was given to Spain, it is alleged that Bioeasy Biotechnology was never in the list.
Cost of the test kits is US$468 million to order Chinese medical equipment and supplies, with 550 million face masks, 5.5 million testing kits, including 950 ventilators.
The Chinese embassy alleged that the order was not shipped from China, and the testing kits were not made by Bioeasy.