Covid-19: After Spain, now the Netherlands recalls defective masks imported from China
Amsterdam/IBNS: Joining nations like Spain and the Czech Republic, the Netherlands has now recalled hundreds of thousands of face masks they had imported from China after they were found to be defective, media reports said.
Dutch authorities received 1.3 million face masks from China on March 21 and distributed some of them to health care providers battling against the spread of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, reported Euro News.
But the health ministry "received a signal that, upon inspection, the quality of this shipment did not meet the required standards," it said in a statement sent to Euronews.
"A second test also proved that the face masks did not meet the required quality standards. It has now been decided to stop the use of this entire shipment," read the statement.
The European nation has so far registered 9,800 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 632 deaths.
After transmitting coronavirus across the world, now China faces another disgrace: their companies are accused of selling dud test kits to different countries with Spain and Czech Republic returning the equipments after they failed to meet the specifications.
As Spain’s death toll hit 4,089, the Chinese embassy in Madrid in a face-saving remark said on Thursday (26 March) that the Spanish government had bought a batch of faulty COVID-19 testing kits from an unauthorised Chinese company, EURACTIV reported.
Spain has emerged as one of the nations which is housing one of the highest numbers of COVID 19 infected patients.
Spain’s efforts to roll out 640,000 rapid testing kits bought from companies in China and South Korea this week hit a setback when the first order of around 9,000 failed to meet specifications and had to be returned, reported EURACTIV.
Soon after receiving the supplies, the Spanish government announced plans to return 9,000 "quick result" test kits to China, El Pais reported, because they were deemed substandard, specifically the sensibility of the test was around 30 percent, when it should be higher than 80 percent, reported Fox News
Apart from Spain, Czech Republic also voiced similar instances where majority of coronavirus test kits supplied by China emerged as faulty.
Up to 80 percent of the 150,000 portable, quick coronavirus test kits China delivered to the Czech Republic earlier this month were faulty, according to local Czech news site Expats.cz. The tests can produce a result in 10 or 15 minutes but are usually less accurate than other tests, reported National Review.
According to reports, due to the high error rate of the kits, the country will now continue to rely on conventional laboratory tests to confirm Coronavirus patients, of which they perform about 900 a day.
Meanwhile, the Turkish government has cast aside a sample of Chinese-made coronavirus rapid testing kits after finding out that they gave inaccurate results, a Turkish official confirmed to Middle East Eye on Friday.
The virus outbreak, which is believed to have originated from China's Wuhan province, has also put a question mark on the future of the economic outlook of the world.
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