Date Published: 21/04/2020
ARCHIVED - Spain seeks reimbursement from China after replacement coronavirus testing kits also prove defective
ARCHIVED ARTICLE The attempt to replace an initial shipment of 640,000 kits has ended in the equipment being found to be ineffective
The Spanish government is making efforts to receive a full reimbursement of the cost of 640,000 rapid coronavirus testing kits purchased from the Chinese company Bioeasy after a second shipment was also found to be defective, it was announced on Tuesday morning.
This news comes after testing of the second consignment, shipped to Spain as a substitute for the first one, was also found to be insufficiently sensitive, leading to the high probability of false negative results being produced. Bioeasy sent a sample of the replacement tests to the Carlos II Health Institute in Madrid, but analysis again found that the fluorescence method used was not effective enough and as a result the government has now made the decision to cancel the order entirely.
No information has been made public regarding either the price paid for the Bioeasy testing kits or the identity of the mysterious Spanish “intermediary” involved in the purchase, as the Ministry of Health is not making sanitation material purchase contracts public despite the Ministry of Hacienda having stated that it is obliged to do so.
It was at the end of March that the Ministry of Health returned the first 58,000 rapid testing kits to China after establishing that they had a sensibility of only 30 per cent rather than the required minimum of 80 per cent. Delivery of the rest of the shipment of 640,000 kits was cancelled but then Bioeasy suggested an alternative rapid testing kit, this one requiring the use of a separate machine to read the results: the company was to supply these readers free of charge in order to compensate for the inconvenience caused.
Shortly after this, the Chinese government stepped in and took control over the export of all health and medical goods, and since the start of April companies which manufacture these products have been required to register officially in the country as well as being qualified abroad. Until now Bioeasy has been certified by two European countries which analysed not the quality of the products but the documentation provided.
These testing kits were purchased before Spain ordered a massive 532 million euros’ worth of medical equipment from China, including eight weeks of supplies of facemasks for patients and medical professionals and a total of 5.5 million serological tests. These are to be used in order to increase the extent of Covid-19 testing in Spain, as recommended by the WHO, but as Spain enters a new phase of the pandemic in which de-escalation of the lockdown is to be phased in it seems that the most reliable method continues to be the costly PCR technique.