The British government is reported to be making plans to distribute millions of free coronavirus antibody tests after a version it backed passed its first major trials.
The Daily Telegraph says the fingerprick tests, which can tell within 20 minutes if a person has ever been exposed to the coronavirus, were found to be 98.6% accurate in secret human trials held in June.
The newspaper says the test was developed by the UK Rapid Test Consortium (UK-RTC), a partnership between Oxford University and leading UK diagnostics firms.
It says that Britain's only antibody tests approved thus far have involved blood samples being sent to laboratories for analysis, which can take days.
Anticipating a regulatory approval in the coming weeks, tens of thousands of prototypes are believed to have already been manufactured in factories across the UK.
The government is said to be hoping that the AbC-19 lateral flow test will be available for use in a mass screening programme before the end of the year.
Chris Hand, the leader of the UK-RTC, was quoted by the Telegraph as saying: "It was found to be 98.6%accurate, and that's very good news."
He said: "We're now scaling up with our partners to produce hundreds of thousands of doses every month," adding the government's health department is in talks with UK-RTC to buy millions of tests before the year ends.
The tests are likely to be free and would be ordered online instead of being sold in supermarkets, according to plans cited by the newspaper.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman was quoted as saying: "While these tests will help us better understand how coronavirus is spreading across the country, we do not yet know whether antibodies indicate immunity from reinfection or transmission."
