United Kingdom seeks refund from China for faulty testing kits

The United Kingdom is trying to get their money back that they had paid to two Chinese companies for coronavirus test kits, which turned out to be faulty.

The United Kingdom is trying to get their money back that they had paid to two Chinese compes for coronavirus test kits, which turned out to be faulty.

"Where tests are shown not to have any prospect of working then we will seek to recover as much of the costs as we can," The Daily Mail quoted the PM's official spokesperson as saying.

The China-originated Coronavirus has ravaged countries including the UK and several nations are scrambling to find a test that can be manufactured at a large scale to know if someone has had the disease and now has immunity to it.

"The government pounced on an early offer of potential tests produced in China with the New York Times reporting officials agreed to pay approximately USD 20 million to secure the home testing kits," reported the British daily on April 17.

On March 19, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had stressed on the importance of antibody tests, while revealing that the UK was in negotiations for the kits.

"We are in negotiations today to buy a so-called antibody test, as simple as a pregnancy test, that could tell whether you have had the disease," Johnson had said.

"And it's early days, but if it works as its proponents claim then we will buy literally hundreds of thousands of these kits as soon as practicable because obviously it has the potential to be a total game-changer," the UK PM added.

More than 13,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the UK.

Professor John Newton, appointed by health secretary Matt Hancock as the UK's 'testing tsar', told MPs earlier this month that "none of the antibody tests assessed by the government so far had worked well enough to be rolled out."

He, however, insisted that his team is 'reasonably optimistic' of a breakthrough in the coming days.

( With inputs from ANI )