Pretty soon, we will be able to say the sun never sets on the countries that have lost time and money buying defective Chinese-manufactured medical gear for the coronavirus pandemic.
British officials revealed this week that the 2 million COVID-19 home test kits they purchased for $20 million upfront from Chinese companies do not work.
“Found to be insufficiently accurate by a laboratory at Oxford University,” the New York Times reports, “half a million of the tests are now gathering dust in storage. Another 1.5 million bought at a similar price from other sources have also gone unused. The fiasco has left embarrassed British officials scrambling to get back at least some of the money.
The report adds, “A spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care said that the government had ordered the smallest number of tests allowed by the sellers and that it would try to recover the money, without specifying how.”
Amazingly, the Chinese companies that sold the defective tests, AllTest Biotech and Wondfo Biotech, both of which declined requests to discuss the prices they charged British officials, are blaming the customer for supposedly misrepresenting and exaggerating their lousy products.
Wondfo told a Chinese state-run newspaper that its “product was intended only as a supplement for patients who had already tested positive for the virus,” the New York Times notes. AllTest, meanwhile, said in a statement that the tests were intended only for use “by professionals,” not for personal use at home. But the problem is not whether the test is administered by a professional or an amateur. The problem is that the tests are flat-out “insufficiently accurate,” according to British health experts.
Earlier, when AllTest and Wondfo courted British officials with a yes-or-no offer for the faulty antibody tests, they said their products met all of the European Union’s health, safety, and environmental standards. The New York Times also reports that “Public health officials reviewed the specifications on paper while the British Foreign Ministry hurriedly dispatched diplomats in China to ensure the companies existed and to examine their products.”
Yet, after all of that, all the promises, the vetting, and guarantees of efficacy, the Chinese companies claim now that it is British officials who dropped the ball.
The audacity of the Chinese government here is really stunning, given that Britain is not even the first coronavirus-infected country to pay Chinese suppliers exorbitant sums of cash for defective Chinese-manufactured medical equipment.
The Czech Republic claims the 300,000 Chinese-made quick tests it purchased work only if the person being tested had been infected by the coronavirus for a minimum of five days. Czech health officials also said that approximately 100,000 of the kits were defective.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Igor Matovic, said elsewhere that the more than 1 million tests that his predecessor purchased from Chinese-connected distributors are also defective. “We have a ton and no use for them,” he said of the $16 million worth of reportedly worthless kits. He added that they should “just be thrown straight into the Danube.”
Spain recalled approximately 60,000 of the 340,000 Chinese-produced tests it purchased. Turkey said its Chinese-made kits had an accuracy rate of just 35%. Officials in the Netherlands recalled 600,000 of the 1.3 million Chinese-manufactured face masks they purchased, citing deficiencies in the filters.
The Austrian government, meanwhile, reported that 500,000 Chinese-produced protective masks destined for South Tyrol were “unusable.” Italy, which has been hit especially hard by the pandemic China spread throughout the globe, is being made to buy back a cache of personal protective equipment it donated to China after reports of the outbreak first reached the West.
Following the failures seen in Spain, Turkey, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, world governments would do well to stay as far away from Chinese “aid” as possible. The British debacle especially leaves one with the distinct impression that Chinese businesses are peddling snake oils cures in a none-too-subtle attempt to profit from the crisis the Chinese Communist Party helped create.
As I have said before: “Made in China” should be seen as a warning if not an outright threat.
