The UK government is planning to distribute millions of free coronavirus antibody tests after successful secret trials, according to reports.
The finger-prick tests, which can tell within 20 minutes if a person has ever been exposed to the coronavirus, were found to be 98.6% accurate in human trials held in June, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The test was developed by the UK Rapid Test Consortium (UK-RTC), a partnership between Oxford University and leading UK diagnostics firms.
Sir John Bell, Oxford’s regius professor of medicine and head of the government’s antibody testing programme, was quoted by the Telegraph as saying: “This rapid test appears to be truly amazing, and it shows we can do this ourselves.”
However, the government’s attempts to roll out mass testing have been dogged by problems. In March, Boris Johnson said finger-prick antibody tests ordered from China would be a “game-changer” but they proved ineffective.
It also remains unclear whether someone who tests positive for coronavirus antibodies would be immune to future infection because scientists do not yet have a full picture of how the disease works.
Britain’s only antibody tests approved thus far have involved blood samples being sent to laboratories for analysis, which can take days, The Telegraph said.
Anticipating a regulatory approval in the coming weeks, tens of thousands of prototypes have already been manufactured in factories across the United Kingdom, the report added.
Ministers are hoping that the AbC-19 lateral flow test will be available for use in a mass screening program before the end of the year, the newspaper reported.
“It was found to be 98.6 per cent accurate, and that’s very good news,” Chris Hand, the leader of the UK-RTC, was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.
“We’re now scaling up with our partners to produce hundreds of thousands of doses every month”, Hand said, adding the government’s health department is in talks with UK-RTC over buying millions of tests before the year ends.
The tests are likely to be free and would be ordered online instead of being sold in supermarkets, according to plans cited by the newspaper.
“While these tests will help us better understand how coronavirus is spreading across the country, we do not yet know whether antibodies indicate immunity from reinfection or transmission,” a health department spokesman told the Telegraph.