The United Kingdom has suffered a setback in its fight against the coronavirus disease after thousands of kits ordered from private enterprises by the government tested positive to COVID-19, Daily Telegraph reports.
The Boris Johnson led government had planned to roll out a programme of mass coronavirus testing, following criticisms of its slow response to testing people for the virus and currently lagging far behind other countries, such as the US and South Korea.
As a result of this development, laboratories have been told that there will be an unavoidable delay to the new testing programme.
The spokeman for Eurofins said: “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.
“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.”
It comes as confusion reigned in government circles over just how many people had been tested for COVID-19 over the weekend.
Michael Gove claimed that the government’s goal of carrying out 10,000 tests per day had been reached on Sunday.
However, it turns out that only 8,278 tests were completed in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday morning.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister clarified on Sunday that Mr Gove had been referring to the capacity available, as opposed to the actual number completed.
