Jordan Health Ministry refutes COVID test kit safety concerns

AMMAN — Test kits and swabs for COVID-19 used by the Ministry of Health are safe and have not been exposed to any form of contamination that may affect their accuracy, the ministry said on Monday.

Director of the ministry’s laboratories Asia Adwan denied the president of the Jordanian Society of Genetic Engineers‎' claims that the PCR kits used by the ministry were contaminated with coronavirus, which led to the increase in the number of infections.

Dismissing the “unsubstantiated” claim, the official said that if all the PCR kits had been contaminated with the virus, all of the tests would have been returned positive. This was not the case, she said, adding that the results of the majority of COVID-19 tests that exceed 20,000 per day came back negative, the Jordan News agency, Petra, reported.

The suppliers of the PCR kits are the same since the outbreak of the pandemic, she said, pointing out that if the kits have been a source of contamination, the caseload would have been high since the onset of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the Jordan Food and Drug Administration has said that the import of coronavirus test kits will not be allowed until all documents proving their safety and effectiveness are verified according to standards that determine the import and circulation of medical supplies.

The Ministry of Health is using the Control Test to ensure kits safety, stressing that the contamination of kits has not been mentioned on approved global monitoring sites

For inquires, the administration invited the public to contact them through all means of communication round the clock, including the toll free complaint hotline: 117114, and WhatsApp Customer Care Problems: 0795632000.