Brazilian doctor: China-made fast screening reagents are "completely garbage"

Reporter : Li Ming

Editor : Yun Tao

Publisher : New Tang Dynasty Television

Ref : https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2020/06/09/a102867028.html

Image : The picture shows on 8 June 2020, medical staff at the Gilberto Novaes Municipal Hospital in Manaus, Brazil, is telling a patient about the condition of covid. (Michael Dantas / AFP via Getty Images)

Recently, the covid pandemic in Latin America has spread rapidly, with Brazil bearing the brunt. In response to the rapid increase in the number of people diagnosed, Brazil has purchased a large number of rapid screening reagents for virus detection from People's Republic of China (PRC). However, a doctor in São Paulo told the British media that these quick screening tools were “completely garbage”.

The epidemic in Brazil has rapidly worsened. At present, the number of diagnoses has exceeded 672,000 and the number of deaths exceeds 37,000. The country's epidemic prevention work is facing very serious challenges. The shortage of medical supplies and the poor quality of imported fast screening reagents are serious problems facing the country.

Celso Granato, clinical director of the FLEURY laboratory in Sao Paulo, said in an interview with  BBC that a large number of Chinese fast screening tools arrived in Brazil in February or March this year. "We tested 11 different brands of fast screening reagents.  9 out of 11 are completely garbage."

However, in the end, the Brazilian government still bought kits made in China. Granado said,: "They think that using these tools for testing is better than no testing, but the actual situation is not the case, compared with no testing, using a bad fast screen for testing will be worse, because the results are very poor."

In fact, it is not accidental that the detection kits from mainland China were found to be of poor quality and incorrect readings. When the epidemic began to spread worldwide, Spain, Turkey, India and many other countries have found that the accuracy of the fast screening reagents produced in mainland China is quite low, and even the accuracy rate is only less than 30%.

As early as the beginning of March this year, the Czech Republic first broke out that the fast screening test reagent group purchased from mainland China had serious defects, and the error rate of this batch of products was as high as 80% after testing.

Shortly thereafter, on 26 March, Spanish media reported that a batch of fast screening test reagents purchased from China was found to be of poor quality and was returned. According to reports at the time, Spanish medical institutions inspected and tested the kits purchased from mainland China and found that the accuracy of these testing tools was only 30%, so the same batch of 9,000 kits was returned.

Two days later, "Eye of the Middle East" reported that a Turkish official confirmed that because a fast-screening test reagent group produced in China was found to have an accuracy rate of only 30% to 35%, the Turkish government has decided to abandon the use of these products from China .

On 27 April, the Indian Medical Research Council also announced that it had cancelled its order to purchase quick screening kits from Guangzhou Wanfu and Zhuhai Livzon. The committee also sent letters to various local governments in India, asking local governments not to order quick screening kits from the two Chinese companies.

The next day (28 April), White House trade adviser Peter Navarro publicly criticized the CCP virus antibody test kits delivered to the United States by Chinese merchants for their poor quality or even forgery, criticizing the CCP government for taking advantage of the epidemic. The pandemic is "getting huge profits."

Navarro, who was authorized by the White House to deal with the supply line of the crisis crisis, pointed out that increasing the detection of viruses and antibodies is extremely important for the U.S. public who is currently blocked to return to work, but the counterfeit sent by Chinese forged test kits can lead to very chaotic situations.

In addition, according to a report by The New York Times on 4 June, when the epidemic in the United Kingdom was the worst, the British government also spent 20 million US Dollars to purchase testing tools from PRC, but these tools were useless, and these testing tools were determined in the laboratory. After the accuracy rate is seriously insufficient, the British government is seeking a refund.