Why You Can Now Buy COVID-19 Test Kits on Alibaba Nicoló Follow Mar 22 · 4 min read

In a world where there is a substantial and ongoing global shortage of COVID-19 testing kits in many of the wealthiest and most developed countries. I was somewhat surprised to find that, at the same time, there is a thriving market for Novel Coronavirus Prick-Test Kits on Jack Ma’s Alibaba.com, for as low as $0.49 per kit. I had to investigate further.

To me, there were two main questions that had to be answered:

Do these test kits work? Are these test kits accurate?

So I set out on my way to try and find at least some semblance of an answer to these questions.

The first thing I discovered was that the main test kits people all over the world are scrambling for are the mouth-swabs and not the finger prick-tests, which use saliva instead of blood.

Saliva-swab tests are more popular mainly because blood tests can only detect the antibodies your body produces once it is already, at least partially, fighting the virus. This means that the antibody test is only circa 80% accurate because it can not detect early-stage cases where the antibodies have not yet been created.

When testing for COVID-19, it is vital that the test is extremely accurate. False negatives cause the virus to spread even faster, and false positives unnecessarily slow down supply chains and keep doctors at home who could be saving lives.

Generally, to check for a virus in a human, you can either test for its gene or test for its antibody. The most accurate method for the Novel Coronavirus is to try to obtain a sample from the alveolus, which is very difficult, so the most common method is the swab test, which tests the saliva. Various other samples from many other areas of the body have been found to contain the Coronavirus DNA so, technically, sampling the blood also works, but this test checks for the antibodies instead of the DNA directly, which tends to be less reliable.

In fact, it is said that, in China, many of the tests do in fact result in up to 50–70% false negatives (people who have the virus but show up negative on the tests), perhaps because they are using these inaccurate prick-tests. This theory comes directly from Wang Chen, the Dean of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. If this theory is correct, these prick-tests are no more useful than flipping a coin to make a COVID-19 judgement.

I came across some people saying these test kits were a complete scam and others who even said they were the test kits the Chinese government rejected. Another important factor to consider is that these tests are often produced in uncontrolled and perhaps non-sterile environments which may do more harm than good in the end.

Another theory I came across is that when the outbreak first began, the Chinese government ordered and approved 20 different companies and thousands of other companies produced these tests even without approval and that these tests are just a surplus from that initial gold rush.

What is clear is that no one really knows where these tests come from, and I do not recommend ordering one to find out. It is also not clear whether they would even ship and whether they would even work at all. Throughout my investigation, I both found out a lot and also found out nothing; it is up to the reader to draw their own conclusions about these test kits. But when I saw people panicking about a lack of test kit availability, I felt I had to investigate why so many were readily available on a Chinese wholesale website.

Disclaimer: I recommend you do not buy these test kits. I investigated their provenance in the article but my conclusion is that it is still a bit unclear. I would stay away until we know more.

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