Covid-19: Lateral Flow Tests

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Clearly, the noble Baroness raises a number of important considerations for when we come up with a living with Covid strategy. At the moment, we are consulting on it to make sure that we have an appropriate strategy that covers many of the issues she referred to.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, am I right in thinking that my noble friend said that 25% of the testing kits are made in this country? Does it follow from that that the other 75% are made in China, or is there a wider field of manufacture?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

As far as I am aware, they are from other countries; I do not know the exact figure for China. The suppliers that have been chosen have passed our protocol and meet the requirements of the procurement framework. It is really important that we have a rigorous standard, given that we found that many of the tests did not meet the instructions for use, as they claimed. We want a testing regime that is not only one of the best in the world but also very well trusted, especially if we are looking at using home testing for future diagnostics to identify more diseases and viruses, rather than waiting for people to go into hospital.