Spain Returns 'Faulty' Coronavirus Testing Kits Bought From Chinese Company

China will replace some coronavirus test kits it exported to Spain after the Spanish government deemed them too inaccurate to be used to diagnose patients.

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Spain's Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare said in a statement that test kits supplied by the company Shenzhen Bioeasy were defective and had failed to correctly diagnose people when tested at hospitals.

Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa announced earlier this week that the country had bought $467 million in medical supplies from China, including 950 ventilators, 5.5 million testing kits, 11 million gloves and more than half a billion protective face masks.

It comes as China is apparently trying to fill the void of American leadership in Europe during the coronavirus crisis as Chinese public officials work to shift the blame of the virus from China to other countries including America.

Shenzhen Bioeasy said in a statement that the incorrect results may be a result of a failure to collect samples or use the kits correctly. The firm said it had not adequately communicated with clients how to use the kits.

The Spanish ministry said it will withdraw the kits that returned incorrect results, and would replace them with a different testing kit provided by Shenzhen Bioeasy.

The virus outbreak has killed more than 4,000 patients in Spain as of Thursday, surpassing the death toll in China, and infected more than 50,000 people.

Meanwhile foreign affairs analysts say China is using its money, medical equipment and teams of doctors and nurses to compete with the US.

It comes as the US's traditional allies of Spain, Italy and France are turning to China for help with much-needed medical supplies.

'China creates the poison and sells the solution to it,' foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang told Fox News.

Dimitar Bechev, a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, observed: 'Never let a good crisis go to waste...

'There is no better illustration that the medical supplies and crews of doctors China has been supplying to Italy and other European countries battling COVID-19. Beijing does carry a large share of the blame for the global pandemic... but now it seeks to shape the narrative of the crisis unfolding before our eyes.'

Since early March, Chinese officials and state media have been pushing the idea that the killer virus could have originated from somewhere else - notably the US.

A WHO investigative report in February concluded that the virus originated from a wildlife market in Wuhan, Hubei province, in November.

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