UK purchases 10 million antibody tests from Roche and Abbott

By Joe Mayes and Alex Morales

(Bloomberg) –

UK agreed to buy 10 million anti-coronavirus antibody tests from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding AG and Abbott Laboratories Ltd in an effort to spur Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he attempts to bring the country back to normality.

Testing will be crucial in helping to understand the spread of the disease, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Thursday at a press conference at 10 Downing Street. They will be deployed gradually starting next week, he said.

“This is an important milestone and represents further progress in our national testing program,” said Hancock. “Knowing that you have these antibodies will help us better understand in the future: if you are less likely to get a coronavirus, die from a coronavirus and transmit a coronavirus.”

Making antibody tests widely available can help Britain lift its lock-in restrictions, as they show who has had the virus before and may have some degree of immunity. This would mean that they could resume social contact with others. However, scientists still don’t know if having antibodies means lasting protection against the disease.

In other developments on Thursday:

Start of trial for 20-minute test to show if patients have coronavirus A government surveillance study suggests that 17% of Londoners and 5% of the national population have had the virus, based on the presence Covid-19 Antibody Under political pressure, Johnson abandoned a plan to force migrant workers in the NHS and nursing homes to pay for additional health care, promising them an exemption

Roche’s test, which was approved by a health authority in the United Kingdom earlier this month, had already been praised in Germany and the United States for its reliability. It gained emergency use in the United States earlier this month and authorization for countries accepting the European CE marking. Roche predicts that production will reach double-digit high millions by June and will exceed the 100 million threshold per month later this year.

Abbott said on May 15 that its test has been approved for use in the UK and that it can deliver up to 5 million per month. The test has also been approved in Canada.

Antibody tests will be free to access through the National Health Service and health care workers will be given priority, said Hancock. Johnson previously described antibody testing as a “game changer” in responding to the virus.

Hancock said a separate coronavirus test developed by the manufacturer OptiGene was tested on Thursday. It can show if a patient has the virus within 20 minutes. “We will be monitoring its effectiveness very closely, and if it works, we will deploy it as soon as possible,” he said. A successful and rapid test would help track the spread of the virus.

U-turn

The OptiGene test has been “very effective” when used in a clinical setting, and will now be tested in nursing homes, doctor’s offices and emergency departments, said the Department of Health. Nearly 4,000 people will be tested in the county of Hampshire, in the south of England.

Despite positive news about the tests, Johnson also suffered a political blow Thursday when his government was forced to turn around for an overload of health care for NHS migrant workers and nursing homes that the Prime Minister had defended Wednesday in the House of Commons.

On Wednesday during the Prime Minister’s weekly question period, opposition Labor Leader Keir Starmer asked Johnson if he thought the charge of 400 pounds – which is expected to reach 624 pounds – was ” correct “. The Prime Minister replied that although he appreciated the “importance” of the matter, the charge was “the right way to go”, bringing £ 900 million to the NHS a year.

But on Thursday, he changed tactics, his office saying that the Prime Minister asked ministers to remove the NHS and social workers from the surcharge “as soon as possible”.

© 2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Bloomberg.com

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