CEO of government-chosen saliva testing provider lashes out at critics

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Asia Pacific Healthcare Group (APHG) chief executive Anoop Singh responds to criticism from overseas scientists about the accuracy of his company’s saliva test, as well as delays in rolling out tests to border workers.

APHG holds a government contract for saliva testing of frontline border workers.

Saliva is not a magic test that suddenly popped up that requires a new way of doing things, Singh said.

We do not have researchers abroad giving the validation [to our test] and I’m referring to Anne Wyllie who continues to be interested in New Zealand.

Yale University’s scientific research Anne Wyllies in the field of saliva research has paved the way for widespread saliva testing for Covid-19 overseas. US radio station NPR has dubbed her the Queen of the Spit for the importance of her work, but Singh wants New Zealand expat Wyllie to stay out of the national debate.

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Sorry, who is Anne Wyllie? Who is Anne Wyllie? She’s a research scientist sitting in the United States on a university campus. How is she qualified?

Singh says the same methods used for nasal swabs can be performed on saliva.

This is a statement that runs counter to Wyllies’ research, as well as wider international research cited in an article co-authored by Wyllies colleague Steph Tan, and published in The Lancet, which finds that different methods are needed to ensure accuracy when dealing with saliva.

The Ministry of Health and APHG, owned by NZ Superfund and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (a Canadian pension fund), have come under increasing criticism over the country’s rollout of saliva testing . Opposition parties have stepped up their criticism in parliament, and NZ First leader Winston Peters wrote to the auditor general asking him to investigate the bidding process.

The $ 60 million saliva test contract was originally launched with the expectation that it would be delivered to border workers in May. Instead, it launched on August 11, days before a major outbreak in Delta.

Provided

Anne Wyllie helped develop the SalivaDirect test at Yale University School of Public Health.

Last week, Chief Health Officer Ashley Bloomfield announced that the ministry was in talks with a saliva testing provider other than the APHG for a wider rollout to people crossing the Level 4 border. ‘Auckland.

Singh criticizes Wyllie for wading through debates about household saliva testing and questions the relevance of her research.

He falsely alleges that the Wyllies study uses saliva samples from overseas university students, while his study, published in August of last year, in fact uses samples from patients hospitalized in the United States with Covid-19 and health workers.

This is not real life, real life receives samples from the New Zealand population, Singh says.

Yet getting saliva samples from the New Zealand population, as a way to check if your test accurately detects Covid-19, has always been a problem because we have had so few cases of Covid-19, until recently. .

The inexperience of New Zealand and Australian authorities in containing outbreaks using saliva testing is why Wyllie previously called on the country to use foreign experts, beyond Australasia, to help resolve test issues.

The virus is so prevalent overseas that scientists in countries like the United States have been able to verify the effectiveness of the tests by randomly testing a number of people in the community, giving them a saliva test, and giving them a saliva test. nasal swab at about the same time. .

ROBERT KITCHIN / Tips

Health Director General Ashley Bloomfield said the Department of Health was in negotiations over broader saliva tests.

However, in New Zealand, Covid-19 patients are confined to the Jet Park hotel, making it more difficult to test people with a wide range of viral loads.

People likely have high levels of viruses in their systems by the time they arrive at a hotel, which could arguably make it easier to detect a test.

By the time the Institute of Environmental Science and Research identified a patient as having Covid-19 at Jet Park, it would sometimes take several days before they could obtain a corresponding saliva sample, and samples must be collected at around the same time.

The APHG validated its test using spiked saliva samples containing artificially injected Covid-19, although Singh says they were also validated using real-world samples from Jet Park.

Their competitor, Rako Science, is recognized by the Department of Health as having a diagnostic validated test, using matched real-world samples imported from the United States, which has been highlighted as a difference between its test and the APHG.

Singh says the APHG test is also diagnostically validated, but declines to provide specific details on specificity and sensitivity. This is data that Rako Science has made available and which indicates the effectiveness of a test to detect Covid-19.

Judith Collins calls for mandatory saliva tests

To explain the APHG’s decision not to disclose this information, Singh uses a cricket analogy of how batting averages differ from one cricket pitch to another.

If you hit in India you will get a high batting average … the Indian cricket team come here [to New Zealand], and all of a sudden the batting averages drop.

So you can’t take a number in isolation and publish it, as if it’s the only one that matters.

He says APHG pathologists say the test results are good, the ESR has approved them, and the Department of Health’s technical advisory committee has approved it as well.

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Rako Science strongly criticized the test chosen by the Ministry of Health for border workers.

Wyllie, a public health researcher, says she is tackling this debate in the interest of public health and is running more Covid-19 tests in New Zealand.

We don’t sell, we don’t earn, mission focused on public health. We send laboratories directly to suppliers, we were not an intermediary. We offer our protocol free of charge.

I have no financial interest in SalivaDirect [the testing protocol she developed] and I have no financial relationship with Rako. I have no financial relationship with anyone in New Zealand.

Tan, colleague of Wyllies, supports her: you can quote me on this subject, 100%, she has no financial association with SalivaDirect. She and the amazing Yale team co-developed this test,

In part, that’s because it was made accessible by being free and using a protocol any lab scientist could use.

Elizabeth Flores / Star Tribune / AP

Saliva tests are common in foreign jurisdictions.

Wyllie has her own questions. The nasal swab costs taxpayers $ 130 per test, and the APHG processed both nasal and saliva tests, meaning giving him a saliva test contract doesn’t increase testing capacity the way it would. a different supplier.

She also says that APHG has no incentive to cut testing costs due to the money made from nasal swabs and the lack of competing tests.

Singh says swab discounts in New Zealand are low compared to foreign jurisdictions like Australia, and he says APHG has the potential to increase testing to nearly 25,000 tests per day and is working on them. to augment.

What about the reviews about how quickly saliva testing is rolled out? Singh has a less definitive answer to this: We made a contract in May, and then the next step was for the ministry to pass the test order, without which we cannot do any work. This order was issued on August 11.

What happened between the signing of the contract and August 11? I think this is a question for the department, because it has nothing to do with us.

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