An antibody test that identified 81 out of 100 people who had the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the past was rejected by the British government.
Scientists in the US held the independent screening of the test, created by Chinese company Wondfo Biotech. The Daily Mail said the test "would give fewer than one in 100 false positives among people who hadn't."
The British government cannot start mass antibody testing because it cannot find one that is good enough. It has turned down all commercially produced antibody tests it could find.
But some clinics in Britain and the United States are buying their own kits online. There is even an online market for test kits and ventilators.
High standards
In a study published by the University of Oxford last week, it discovered all nine tests bought by the British government fell below standard. In a report by the Daily Mail, it said the testing kits' " sensitivity - ability to correctly spot people who had had the disease - ranged from 70 per cent to just 55 per cent."
Some experts say imperfect tests are still alright because they can still determine how many people have been infected in the country. An antibody test can determine if the person was already infected by COVID-19 in the past.
The antibody test would also help the country to ease lockdown restrictions and give insight into the possibility of another wave of COVID-19 infections.
According to English physician and epidemiologist Christopher John MacRae Whitty, who is also the chief medical adviser to the United Kingdom government, "currently available tests would be good enough to do surveillance of the population, if not diagnose people."
Playing it safe
Wondfo's test scored 81.8% on the sensitivity measure, which was only 3.2% lower than the standard by Oxford at 85%. Eleanor Riley, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, told the Daily Mail, "The problem with the commercial rapid antibody tests is that they are not sensitive enough - they fail to pick up antibodies in... people who do in fact have antibodies. "
Oxford University developed the first vaccine for COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. It is undergoing tests, which will run for six months, on 1,112 volunteers. They are required to return to the lab for at least 11 times after they receive the vaccine.
The Daily Mail said Oxford's ELISA test "was 100 per cent specific - its ability to spot people who have not had the disease, a wrong result of which is a false positive." Wondfo's test, on the other hand, came close to ELISA at 99.1%.
The Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said the UK will only approve a test if it has a sensitivity and specificity test of 98%. According to the Daily Mail, sensitivity refers to "the area that authorities can afford to compromise on because testing errors in that area lead to false negatives."
Meanwhile, HealthNewsReview.org said specificity "measures a test's ability to correctly generate a negative result for people who don't have the condition that's being tested for (also known as the "true negative" rate)."
