Labs told to STOP taking blood samples from ‘unreliable’ coronavirus home tests sold by Superdrug and online pharmacies

HEALTH officials have ordered laboratories to stop accepting blood samples from privately bought antibody tests.

Scientists have been told not to process samples from coronavirus home test kits being sold by pharmacies because they can give “unreliable results”.

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Antibody kits, which tell the user if they have previously had the virus, are currently available to buy online from around £70.

They differ from antigen tests, which determine whether someone currently has the virus.

Some of the country’s largest pharmacy chains are selling the test, including Superdrug and Lloyds.

However, officials have now ordered labs to stop processing them because the results could be unreliable, according to MailOnline.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which governs the rules over medicines used in the UK, has said Brits should ignore any result they get from the private kits.

People who have purchased one of these sampling kits, and received an antibody test result, should not consider the result to be reliable and should not take any action on it.

MHRA spokesperson

A spokesperson for the MHRA said: “Patient safety and public health are our main priorities and it is in the interests of everyone for antibody tests to be as reliable and meaningful as they can be.

“There are several UK providers of testing services who offer Covid-19 antibody testing using a fingerprick sample of capillary blood collected in a small container.

“We are asking all providers of laboratory-based Covid-19 antibody testing services using capillary blood collected by a fingerprick to temporarily stop providing this service until home collection of this sample type has been properly validated for use with these laboratory tests.”

They continued: “Use of unvalidated sample types may lead to unreliable results and as such we are working closely with the service providers, laboratories and test manufacturers to resolve the regulatory and patient safety issues.

“People who have purchased one of these sampling kits, and received an antibody test result, should not consider the result to be reliable and should not take any action on it.

“This does not affect rapid point of care tests or laboratory tests performed using venous blood.”

FINGER-PRICK TEST

Superdrug has been offering what it calls an “accurate and reliable” home finger-prick test.

The pharmacy giant became the first high street shop to start selling the coronavirus antibody tests to the public earlier this month.

The antibody home test requires a few drops of blood to be collected in a vial before it is delivered to a lab.

The test used by companies like Superdrug is part-approved by health authorities in the UK, but the process of pricking a finger is not – though the test is still legal.

The Government’s testing chief warned Brits not to buy antibody test kits at the weekend, saying people should wait for official checks to become available.

Professor John Newton warned: “The public need to be aware that those tests are not the same as those we have evaluated and approved for use.

“The laboratory-based tests have a much higher standard of accuracy. We wouldn’t recommend at the moment that people rely on the tests that are becoming widely available.

“My advice would be to wait until we have better tests which will be available in a similar form very soon, though they are still under evaluation at the moment.”

The Government announced last week that more than 10 million antibody kits have been bought in a deal with pharmaceutical firm Roche.

They will first be rolled out in hospitals and care homes.