The Government’s head of coronavirus testing says he doesn’t expect antibody tests to start before the end of April.
It means none of the 100,000 tests a day promised by Health Secretary Matt Hancock by the end of the month will be antibody tests.
Antibody tests determine whether a patient has had the Covid-19 virus - and potentially show whether they have immunity.
The tests currently being performed are antigen tests - which only show whether the patient currently has the virus.
Developing a working antibody test could be crucial to allowing those who have already had the coronavirus to return to work, and working towards ending the national lockdown.
Professor John Newton was appointed by Mr Hancock to oversee the government’s testing operation earlier this month.
He told a committee of MPs today: “Although the target as the Secretary of State set it was not specific to different types of test, we do not expect to be doing antibody tests by the end of April.”
He added: “We're not relying on antibody tests to make up that target.”
The government has reportedly struggled to find an antibody test which works reliably enough to use with the wider public.
Professor Newton went on: “There are of course antibody tests available now, the antibody tests are being used to perform the epidemiological surveillance. So those are being undertaken by Public Health England (PHE) at the moment.
“Although a number of NHS labs are also building capacity to undertake the so-called Eliza antibody test, so those will be laboratory antibody tests and those are beginning to come on stream in relatively modest numbers.”
Professor Newton went on to say PHE will be able to scale up antibody testing quite quickly once a reliable test is available.
And he said the government would be looking to cancel orders and get refunds for thousands of tests purchased by the government, but which were found not to be fit for purpose.
Earlier, experts complained a lack of blood samples from coronavirus sufferers was hampering efforts to validate antibody tests.
PHE currently only has a small number of positive blood samples for screening antibody tests to see whether they work, while the Department of Health is trying to create a blood bank.
Part of the issue, according to PHE, is that it takes time for an immune response to develop and therefore the blood from those who have suffered Covid-19 is only just reaching the maturity needed for use in antibody tests.
But some private labs say their efforts to validate tests that can then be used by frontline staff and the wider public are being hampered by PHE not sharing its blood samples.
This is despite the Government calling on industry to help it ramp up testing, including of antibody tests, which are one route to getting people back to their normal daily lives.
Professor Sir John Bell, from Oxford University who is a Government adviser on life sciences, has said the university team has struggled to get samples from PHE.
Oxford is leading the validation of tests on behalf of the Government and has yet to find a test that works.
But, PHE said Oxford University had not been refused support.
It suggested Government departments, biotech firms and university research labs are all facing similar problems in sourcing positive blood samples.
The Department of Health and Social care today announced pharma and diagnostics firms were teaming up to roll out millions of antigen tests.
A new lab to be set up by AstraZeneca, GSK and Cambridge University aims to carry out 30,000 tests a day by the end of May.
