The United Kingdom has halted its proposed mass testing for
coronavirus after discovering that some of the kits being imported into the
country were contaminated with COVID-19.
According to Telegraph UK, laboratories across the country
were on Monday asked to shelve the earlier fixed tests after traces of the
virus were seen in the testing kits ordered from overseas.
The development comes days after the British government had
engaged the services of private firms to facilitate mass production of kits to
improve testing capacity for the virus.
This, the government had explained, would help surpass its
current capacity of 11,000 tests per day to 25,000 daily by mid-April.
The government, had however, suspended the mass testing
after key components ordered from Eurofins, a company based in Luxembourg, had
been contaminated with coronavirus.
A spokesman for Eurofins said such contamination was likely
during mass production but can be resolved “by proper cleaning and production
segregation procedures.”
“In rare occasions, delays in some orders may occur if based
on Eurofins Genomics stringent quality and environmental control procedures,
manufacturing of a product may not meet the quality or purity criteria set by
Eurofins Genomics,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
“We are aware that contaminations of the nature you
mentioned have been observed by several primers and probes manufacturers around
the world after they produced SARS-COV2 positive controls.
“Those initial problems can be easily resolved by proper
cleaning and production segregation procedures.”
As of April 1, the deadly disease has spread across 203
countries, infected close to 900,000 people worldwide, with 44,169 deaths
recorded so far.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) had called on countries
to “test, test, test” as a key part of its strategy to tackle the virus.
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