Test tsar’s shares in supplier of ‘pointless’ Covid kits

A TOP Government adviser on Covid tests is a shareholder in the Swiss firm that sold the UK millions of ‘pointless’ antibody screening kits, a Mail on Sunday investigation has found.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, holds more than £773,000 worth of shares in Roche, the pharmaceutical company that made the kits.

He was also on Roche’s board as a non-executive director, but stood down in March.

In early May, the Government agreed to buy £13.5million of Roche’s antibody tests, which the firm said were ‘100 per cent accurate’. Sir John states he played no role in the decision.

There are two types of Covid test. Diagnostic tests tell patients if they currently have the virus, while antibody tests – like the Roche one – reveal if a person has antibody cells in

‘You can say for certain you’ve had infection’

their immune system that prove they had it in the past.

Following the deal, Sir John appeared on Channel 4 News and Radio 4’s Today programme calling the tests a ‘major step forward’ – but did not mention his links to Roche.

Studies revealed antibodies for Covid-19 quickly wane, and so testing for them reveals little. At the time of the Roche deal, Sir John said: ‘If you test positive with this test, you can say for certain you have had the infection so you will have had Covid-19.’

After the Roche contract was signed, Public Health England (PHE) found the tests may not be reliable, so plans to make them available to NHS and care workers were dropped.

Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at Birmingham University, went so far as to call the tests ‘pointless’.

Sir John told The Mail on Sunday he disagreed with PHE but admitted ‘the Government has no real use for antibody tests right now’.