Owing to its 5% accuracy and failing ICMR’s quality checks, China’s COVID-19 testing kits are termed inaccurate and faulty. Following this, the Indian government cancelled the shipment of over half a million COVID-19 testing from China.
China’s COVID-19 Testing Kit
China offers a simple detection tool that provides rapid results. Accordingly, it detects the antibodies IgG and IgM in the individual. The principle being, the human body produces an ample amount of IgG and IgM during its first encounter with a virus or any antigen. Since coronavirus is a novel pathogen, our body reacts accordingly. Thus, assisting in understanding the scale of the pandemic. Yet, it does not act as a sole diagnostic tool like RT-PCR testing.
Government’s decision of canceling the testing kits
Due to the exponential growth of infection across the country, rapid testing was necessary to scale the disease. Thus, forcing the government to import COVID-19 rapid antibody testing kits from China. However, now ICMR supports the withdrawal of orders placed to 2 Chinese companies. With failing the quality check, ICMR claims that China’s COVID-19 testing kits are faulty and over-priced. Further, it adds that the kits are not sensitive and specific. Meanwhile, the government withdrew the kits from states and advised them to stop testing patients using these kits.
China Concerned Over the Cancelling of Testing Kits
China’s spokesperson Ji Rong conveyed that China gives importance to the quality of medical products while exporting. Nevertheless, the test kits from Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech and Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics is not performing correctly. Despite that, he defends that the cancellation is unfair as few individuals pre-emptively label Chinese products as faulty. Subsequently, he requested the officials to resolve the issue reasonably rather than an abrupt cancellation.
Reacting to the Loss
ICMR statement that the COVID-19 testing kits show high variation in sensitivity results in the cancellation of half a million testing kits, China faces extreme loss. Thus, Beijing will try to resolve the issue by working together with New Delhi at the earliest. As dealing with a pandemic scenario is far more important than the spite.