Health chiefs are impeding push for antibody tests, claim labs
PUBLIC Health England is hampering the development of accurate antibody tests by refusing to share vital blood samples from Covid-19 patients, private laboratories have claimed.
The tests, which have been heralded as a potential “game changer” by the Prime Minister, are used to confirm whether an individual has had a coronavirus infection and may now be immune.
But private laboratories have claimed that Public Health England (PHE) has not responded to multiple requests asking for blood samples from Covid-19 patients, despite interventions from Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary.
According to leaked correspondence shown to The Daily Telegraph, John Bell, a professor from Oxford University who is advising the Government about antibody tests, is among those who have not received assistance from official sources.
“We could not get them from PHE either,” he wrote in an email on Monday. “We are collecting ours one convalescent patient at a time. Now have 15, soon will have more than 30. No generous samples however.”
The blood samples are required to validate the antibody assays. If the tests are reliable, they could be used to screen thousands of people in the UK, including healthcare workers.
“It’s very peculiar, a real mess,” said Prof Karol Sikora, chief medical officer of Rutherford Health, one of Britain’s largest private cancer care providers, and former director at the World Health Organisation. “We’ll never get through the number of [tests] you need to get through without using this army of small laboratories … as well as the labs at PHE and Porton Down.”
Rutherford Health has purchased 1,000 antibody tests for $10 (£7) per unit from South Korea, which has been widely praised for its approach to testing during the pandemic, in order to test staff working with cancer patients.
Of roughly 400 staff members, 10 per cent are currently isolating because they or their family members have coronavirus symptoms. “Testing everyone really is key to understanding who is free to go back to work normally,” said Prof Sikora.
To validate the quality of the South Korean antibody tests, which are due to arrive tomorrow, the cancer centre is working with Medical Diagnosis, an independent laboratory in north London. The lab team said they have another 50,000 antibody tests ready to roll out.
George Xynopoulos, chief executive of Medical Diagnosis, said it needed just 50 samples from positive coronavirus patients and 50 from those who tested negative to confirm whether these antibody assays are accurate.
However, the lab claims that ministers and officials at PHE and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have repeatedly ignored phone calls and letters asking for these 100 blood samples. The most recent letter – signed by Prof Sikora, Dr Xynopoulos and four other senior public health ex
‘Testing everyone really is key to understanding who is free to go back to work normally’
perts – was sent to Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, and Lord Bethell, who is overseeing coronavirus testing in the UK, on Saturday evening.
Antibody tests have been promoted as essential as they allow experts to identify whether we are anywhere near “herd immunity”.
But PHE said that they only have a “very small number” of positive blood samples containing coronavirus antibodies, so have not been able to share them with private companies.
“The Government wants as many labs as possible to support the scaling up of the UK’S testing capacity and any commercial companies that can help should contact the DHSC,” said Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director at PHE. “PHE has only a very small number of positive blood samples.
“It takes time for an immune response to develop; for most people infected in the UK, this will have been in the past six weeks and so their blood is only now reaching maturity to be used in this capacity. A blood bank will be developed that companies can use to validate their technology.”