China has blamed and accused India of mishandling the coronavirus rapid testing kits after they were found faulty. China’s statement comes hours after India cancelled orders for about half a million Chinese rapid test kits for coronavirus procured from China after they were found to be faulty, demonstrating a mere 5 per cent accuracy rate.
“We have also learned that there are strict requirements for the storage, transportation and use of COVID-19 antibody rapid test kits. Any operation which is not carried out by professionals in accordance with the product specifications will lead to testing accuracy variations,” Counselor Ji Rong, spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi said on Monday.
Citing statements issues by the two medical companies, Ji Rong defended the two Chinese companies saying, “We have noticed that Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech and Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics already issued statements on this issue. They both stressed that their COVID-19 antibody rapid test kits had obtained the certification from the National Medical Products Administration of China (NMPA), meet the quality standards of China and exported countries, and have also been validated and approved by ICMR through National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune and considered as satisfactory products.”
“The COVID-19 antibody rapid test kits produced by these two Chinese companies have been exported to well recognized in many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America,” the statement further said.
The Centre had procured 5 lakh kits from two Chinese companies – Wondfo Biotech and Livzon Diagnostic and distributed among the states. But after several state governments complained of inaccurate results, the kits were tested by the ICMR, following which they asked the states to stop future procurements and use of the ones distributed earlier.
The United Kingdom paid for trusting China
After exporting the deadly Wuhan Coronavirus to the world, China has now been caught dumping faulty Corona testing kits to various countries, which are now responsible for delivering misleading results during the tests.
The 2 million home test kits bought by the United Kingdom from two Chinese firms, namely, AllTest Biotech and Wondfo Biotech, for a whopping $20 million had also been found to be faulty and insufficiently accurate by a laboratory at the Oxford University. The Government had to pay the money upfront in 24 hours and collect the crates of test kits from a Chinese facility. Now, that the Chinese test kits have been found as unreliable, they have been left unused in the storage.
The Chinese firms had then too blamed the British officials for not being able to comprehend the utility of the test kits.
Chinese testing kits failing world
Reportedly, the Turkish government had also discarded Chinese-made coronavirus rapid testing kits after finding out that they gave inaccurate results. The decision by Turkey to discard Chinese faulty kits comes after Spain had taken a similar measure to withdraw at least 9,000 Chinese-made kits after realising that they had only 30 per cent accuracy.
Similar results have emerged from the Czech Republic. It was reported that as much as 80 per cent of the 150,000 portable Wuhan Covid-19 rapid test kits “donated” by China were faulty, forcing healthcare workers in the country to rely on conventional laboratory tests. While China tried to give the impression that it had ‘donated’ the test kits, in reality, it was bought and paid for by the Czech government. Czech health ministry reportedly paid about USD 568,000 for 100,000 of the kits while the country’s interior ministry paid for the rest.
