Chemical firms must help make testing kits, says ex-minister
BRITISH companies should be asked to produce vital chemicals needed for coronavirus tests to help offset a worldwide shortage, a former trade secretary has said.
Lord Lilley, who was trade and industry secretary in the 1990s, said Britain’s “very developed chemicals industry” should be harnessed to produce ingredients for Covid-19 test kits.
His comments follow Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, promising 100,000 tests a day by the end of this month despite concerns the ambitious pledge could be difficult to meet due to a global shortage of the chemicals and precision plastics needed for kits.
Lord Lilley said: “I’m all in favour of deploying the powers of industry and that means opening up private and independent laboratories. I’m amazed that nobody inside or outside of the Government seems to be talking about us making the chemicals.
“Making chemicals isn’t simple but I’m surprised no one has said, ‘Why don’t we start making our own, even if that’s going to take a month?’ You can’t imagine them during the war saying, ‘Oh well, we had better buy it from the enemy rather than make it ourselves.’ Not that we have enemies in this case, but we have rivals for supplies.” Allan Wilson, president of the Institute of Biomedical Science, said the Government would have to “gamble” on whether ingredients not approved by the testing kit manufacturers could produce reliable results. Alternatively, they would have to wait months to prove the new “homemade” chemicals were reliable. “Ultimately some of these chemicals are not difficult to produce and can be made here,” he said.
Mr Wilson said companies that make testing kits insist that only their brand of chemicals, reagents and plastics are used otherwise results cannot be officially endorsed.
“It’s a question of what is the greater risk: not doing the tests or doing the test with agents that have not gone through the validation process,” Mr Wilson said, explaining the latter could lead to incorrect results. While NHS laboratories are accredited to the same high standard, smaller companies may not be of the same quality, he added.
Doris-Ann Williams, chief executive of the British In Vitro Diagnostics Association, said: “All ways to increase capacity for testing are being considered. The NHS pathology staff are doing an amazing job, in addition to all the testing that needs to be done for patients with other health issues too.”
One reagent in particularly short supply is lysis buffer which breaks down the cell membranes to extract the viral RNA (ribonucleic acid), which is used to decode expressions of genes.
Mike Fischer, of Systems Biology Laboratory in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, told BBC Radio 4’s programme there was “no limit” to the help small labs could offer to increase testing capacity in Britain, in a similar way that small boats were used during the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Supply channels for chemicals could hold up testing, and the Government should use the network of smaller labs to help fight the virus he said, adding he was building a “supply team” with South Korean and Chinese speakers to try to trace key chemicals.
Meanwhile, Prof Kai Zacharowski, the president of the European Society of Anaesthesiology, accused member states of the European Union of acting selfishly. “Each member state bought what was available on the market to treat solely their own people rather than the EU considering how best to share those supplies,” he said.