(If tests aren't accurate how will we ever know?)

New Test Hopes Dashed as U.K. Finds Antibody Kits Don’t Deliver

The U.K. became the latest country to stock up on faulty Covid-19 tests after Oxford University researchers found that many of the kits can’t accurately show whether someone was exposed to the new coronavirus.

Multiple tests provided for evaluation “have not performed well,” said John Bell, a professor of medicine at Oxford and adviser to the government on life sciences. The home-testing kits are designed to look in people’s blood for antibodies produced by the immune system to fight the virus.

Many countries are hoping these kinds of tests can help grasp the true scope of the pandemic and reveal who has built up immunity to Covid-19 and can return to a more normal life – but they must be accurate. Germany estimates such tools may be three months away, Bell wrote. It could be at least a month before the U.K. can find a reliable version, he said.

“Sadly, the tests we have looked at to date have not performed well,” Bell said in a blog post. “This is not a good result for test suppliers or for us.”

British officials said on March 25 that they’d ordered more than 4 million of these tests, which can be as simple as finger-prick devices.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-07/new-test-hopes-dashed-as-u-k-finds-antibody-kits-don-t-deliver