Table of Contents
ANTIBODIES
- The efficacy of Rapid Testing kits for coronavirus brought in from China have been questioned by at least three states,
- One of which, Rajasthan, has refused to use
- Other 2 are- Kerala and Tamil Nadu
- Rajasthan conducted around 170 tests in the COVID- 19 hotspots, starting with Jaipur, since Friday.
- The kits were used for testing of patients who have already tested positive for coronavirus.
- But the rapid test kits found them negative, which raised questions about the credibility of these kits.
- Rajasthan health minister Raghu Sharma told that the rapid test kits had only 5.4% accuracy.
- ICMR Raman R Gangakhedkar said, “We got a complaint of less detection from one state.
- So we spoke to three states and found that a lot of variation is there in the accuracy of test results of positive samples,
- In some places it is 6% while others it is 71%.”
- This disease is only 3.5-month-old so all technologies will be refined over time but we can’t ignore these findings.
- The ICMR also said it will raise an issue with the manufacturer of the kits if results continue to be faulty.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE EQUIPMENT?
- The Dutch health ministry announced it had recalled 600,000 face masks.
- The equipment had arrived from a Chinese manufacturer on 21 March, and had already been distributed to front-line medical teams.
- Dutch officials said that the masks did not fit and that their filters did not work as intended, even though they had a quality certificate,
- Spain’s government encountered similar problems with testing kits ordered from a Chinese company.
- It announced it had bought hundreds of thousands of tests to combat the virus,
- But revealed in the following days that nearly 60,000 could not accurately determine if a patient had the virus.
- Along with Spain,
- Slovakia, the Czech Republic have returned thousands of faulty rapid testing kits they had purchased from Chinese companies.