Tests for travellers

SIR – I am pleased that PCR tests will be replaced by lateral-flow tests when returning from an overseas holiday (report, October 15).

However, why is it that NHS lateral-flow test kits do not qualify as suitable, meaning the travelling public are obliged to purchase new ones?

Given that thousands have been issued and are probably only partly used, why are these batch-coded kits not adequate? If they are in date, surely they are fit for purpose, otherwise the Government would not have approved them.

This is wasteful, unnecessarily costly for travellers, and smacks of incompetence. Can it not be changed? Alastair Pringle

Cranbrook, Kent