The Innova scandal Part 3: The US says ‘Throw the tests in the trash’ [Article From 14/6/21]

This is the third instalment of a now four-part investigation into the scandal of the British Government’s procurement of the flawed Innova Covid-19 lateral flow test now trashed in America by the FDA whose scathing critique of the test, the UK Government, with contracts with Innova to date totalling £3.2billion, has decided to discount. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. 

IN AN unanticipated announcement at the end of last week, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned the public to stop using the Innova lateral flow test. In the most stringent of terms, it stated: ‘The FDA has significant concerns that the performance of the test has not been adequately established, presenting a risk to health.’ 

It told anyone who has the test in their possession to destroy it by putting in the bin, or as the Americans say, the trash.

The Innova SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Qualitative Test is the very same test that was correctly described that night in the BBC’s Newsnight‘s BBC iPlayer – Newsnight – 11/06/2021 report of this news as the ‘cornerstone’ of the British Government’s anti-Covid strategy. The FDA’s press release, they said, was ‘scathing and damning’ about the Innova test while Allyson Pollock, a public health doctor appearing on the programme, declared it unfit for purpose, adding for good measure that there is no evidence that mass-testing and ‘Test and Trace’ reduces transmission.

As I reported in Part 2 of my investigation, this is the test that was favoured by the UK above 120-plus other contenders for its Covid mass screening programme (initially called Moonshot but renamed NHS Test and Trace) after the operation had to shift from sole reliance on the flawed PCR test.

It is the test to which both Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, and Susan Hopkins from Public Health England (PHE) gave their imprimatur.

It is the test for which the Department of Health (DHSC) committed hundreds of millions of UK taxpayer pounds to a Californian start-up company some six/seven weeks before the clinical evaluation overseen by Sir John Bell was published or the piloting of the finally chosen Innova test completed.

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