Spain’s health ministry, which is struggling to deal with a surge in coronavirus patients, said it was sending back to China about 9,000 test kits because they did not meet the required criteria.
China’s Embassy in Madrid said on Twitter that Spain had acquired the substandard test kits from a company that had not received an official license to sell such products. The embassy said that the bulk of the medical equipment ordered by Spain had not yet left China.
As of Thursday, the coronavirus had killed more than 4,000 people in Spain, a tally second only to Italy.
Problems with test kits from China have also been raised in Germany.
“I get every hundreds of emails every day with people saying, ‘Buy a million quick tests from China,’” Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, told reporters on Wednesday.
“Our institutes are testing these and looking at them, and they are not sensitive and specific enough,” Mr. Spahn said. “It does not help us if we have quick tests that deliver large numbers of false positive or false negatives. As soon as we have a quick test that is good, we will start using it.”
The problem with the test kits in Spain came to light a day after the country’s health minister, Salvador Illa, announced a huge order from China for face masks, respirators and other emergency gear worth $375 million.
Some Spanish hospitals have been strained to the limit by the pandemic, and doctors and nurses have been left without sufficient face masks and other protective gear. Employees in funeral parlors and nursing homes have also highlighted their unsafe working conditions, which have had tragic consequences.
Mr. Illa told lawmakers on Thursday, however, that Spain was reaching the peak of its epidemic and entering “a stabilization phase.”
Reference: NY Times
