ANOTHER testing shambles: Officials spark confusion by asking firms to STOP finger-prick Covid-19 antibody tests taken at home - as experts accuse health chiefs of 'making it up as they go'

• Home tests have been online for weeks but companies now being urged to stop
• Officials understood to have noticed a real problem within the last few days
• Experts say the timing is 'odd' and this 'should have been put to bed ages ago' 
• Companies are tight-lipped but many have suspended services 
• Tests being used in a way that was not intended, with self-sampled blood 

British officials sparked anger and confusion today with a sudden decision to block private companies from carrying out Covid-19 finger-prick antibody tests for the public.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has told firms offering to test blood samples people take themselves from finger-pricks to 'temporarily stop providing this service'.

Until then, people had been able to buy mail order kits for upwards of £69 from online pharmacies to find out if they have already had the coronavirus.

The tests have been around for weeks online, with Superdrug even having to suspend its because of overwhelming demand.

They involve taking blood and looking for signs of past infection, which is indicated by the presence of antibodies from the immune system. 

But the Government is thought to have become jittery about the prospect of people finding out they might be immune to the virus and ignoring lockdown rules. 

The move, which officials deny is a ban and say is merely guidance, led to critics accusing the Government of 'making it up as they go'. One top scientist said it showed a 'lack of foresight'. 

MHRA officials met this morning to discuss the subject and are carrying out a review of the tests involved. It only concerns tests which rely on people taking their own blood from their finger, not ones which use professional samples of vein blood.

The issue has only just come to light because officials noticed a surging number of these home tests being offered within the last few days, MailOnline understands.

Abbott, one of the manufacturers of a Government validated test which is being used by Superdrug, is furious that its tests are being used with self-sampled blood, which was not its intended use. 

The MHRA's messaging has caused confusion because companies bought the same tests approved by the Government - which will be used on NHS and care workers from this week - but uses them in a different way, which makes them less accurate. 

It is not believed to be linked to a report issued yesterday by the US's Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, which suggested that even highly accurate antibody tests may be wrong up to 50 per cent of the time when used for an uncommon virus.

Antibody tests use blood samples to look for signs of past infection and, if positive, show that somebody may have some degree of immunity to a disease. However, scientists still do not fully understand how much immunity people develop to Covid-19, if any

Dr Simon Clarke, a cellular microbiology expert at the University of Reading, said taking the decision this late in the day was ‘really odd’. 

At least half a dozen companies have already bought antibody tests and are selling them en masse to members of the public, many of whom are now unable to get results despite having paid for a private service. 

Dr Clarke said the Government was probably panicking that people receiving positive antibody results might believe they were immune to Covid-19 and get brave about breaking lockdown rules. 

He told MailOnline: 'This is really odd. At least one of the tests validated by the Government is commercially available. 

'Why they’re telling people not to use them; they don’t want people to be assuming that they’ve had the virus and are immune.

BRITAIN'S COVID-19 TESTING SHAMBLES: A TIMELINE

March 12: Professor Chris Whitty announced that widespread coronavirus testing of members of the public would come to an end. The outbreak was too large, officials have since admitted, and only hospital patients could be tested within capacity. 

March 19: Boris Johnson promised to get antibody tests 'as simple as a pregnancy test' available for people to use at home - this is still nowhere near a reality.

March 25: Public Health England's Sharon Peacock said the UK had bought 3.5million antibody tests and was evaluating them with a view to getting them available 'within days' - they were all deemed useless and were never made available to the public.

April 2: Health Secretary Matt Hancock sets ambitious aim of carrying out 100,000 coronavirus tests every day by the end of the month. On April 1 the Government had done 10,412. 

April 3: Universities and private labs caused uproar in the 'little ships' fiasco when they revealed the Government had turned down their offers to help with swab testing, to check who had the disease at the time.

April 16: The New York Times reported that Britain had spent £16.5million on antibody tests that it no longer wanted to use.

May 1: Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed the Government hit its 100,000-a-day test target, but it emerged that it had just mailed out 39,000 of them on that day and many of those may never have been returned or analysed'Them not wanting to think that way is probably right… but this should have been put to bed earlier.' 

He said that taking the decision now shows 'a lack of foresight that getting it wrong could cause problems'.  

At least two laboratories are known to have stopped processing as a result of the 'guidance' from the MHRA.

Professor Karol Sikora, a former World Health Organization cancer chief, took antibody testing into his own hands at the Rutherford Cancer Centres where he is medical director.

He told this website: 'In Britain the testing is appalling. There seems to be no strategy and it changes by the day. They're making it up as they go... 

'It's another failure. We shouldn't have got to this point in the pandemic and not had a properly worked out testing strategy both for the virus and antibodies. It should have been sorted out at the beginning.

'The real problem is, if you've got this in the post and never done it before, the chances of you screwing it up are high - it's just the way these things are designed. And people are nervous about pricking their fingers anyway. So there's a lot of inconsistency.'

The finger-prick tests have never been approved by the Government because they use a different type of blood to that which official tests have been validated on.

In the lab the tests use blood taken directly from a patient's veins, while the home tests may use blood from capillaries, which are tiny vessels carrying oxygenated blood through the skin.

After noticing rising numbers of pharmacies offering the home finger-prick tests the MHRA is now cracking down on these firms by urging them to stop. 

The tests remain legal and it is not clear whether the Government has any legal powers to stop the companies doing the testing anyway, but officials fear the results could be unreliable. 

People who bought the tests complained on Twitter that companies should not have been selling them in the first place if they weren't approved. 

One user, Maneesh Juneja, tweeted: 'I wonder if consumers like me who paid £69 for a covid-19 antibody test where they have already got a result back, will refund consumers now that the tests with finger prick blood sample method have to be validated by the MHRA?'

Another, Helen Ashby, said she had ordered a test and tweeted at online pharmacy Thriva: 'Really shouldn't have taken my order then!'

Ben Read said: 'Stop selling coronavirus antibody kits until you are approved to sell them. Been given the run around for a test I purchased last week, supposedly blocked by MHRA guidance from April. Pretty deceitful.' 

People who have bought tests have shown on Twitter that they were unhappy to be sold something not approved by the Government