On the evening of 13th October, reports began to surface that students had received Covid-19 testing kits from Birmingham City Council that had already been used. 

After Redbrick’s coverage of this story, it has since come to light that some students proceeded to use these contaminated kits to test themselves, before they realised the mix-up.

Today, Redbrick spoke to Henry Olendzki, a second year student whose house on Tiverton Road received some of these already-used tests.

‘They gave us five […] sealed boxes, […] we opened [them] to try and do the tests because [the council] said they would be back [to retrieve the tests] within the next 15 minutes.

‘Whilst we were trying to get through the second layer [of plastic], that’s when we noticed that the tests had already been done before [sic], because it wasn’t immediately obvious.

‘Once we did find out [the tests had already been used], we went out onto [sic] the street and gave [the testing kits] back to the people who’d been handing them out.

‘I think there were other [residents] who had also been given the tests […] out on the street.’

Olendzki wasn’t sure that the handing out of tests was immediately stopped once the mistake was realised, but said that he ‘hoped so.’

Birmingham City Council’s Public Health Director, Dr. Justin Varney, spoke to the Birmingham Mail yesterday, stating that ‘our duty of care is to be absolutely crystal clear to check if anyone has been put at risk, have we got the right support for them.’

 Redbrick asked Henry Olendzki if his house had had any contact from the council, but he stated that ‘as of [today], no one has reached out, or offered any sort of support,’ but suggested that this may be ‘[yet] to come.’

Speaking to Redbrick on 14th October, Dr. Varney stated that only 25 pre-used tests were given out to Selly Oak residents, and that they were ‘identified within a couple of minutes.’ He also said that ‘only one kit had actually opened, and the individual who’d opened it had […] not opened the specimen sample.’

 Dr. Varney stated that he ‘[didn’t] think there’s any risk of contamination,’ despite a video seen by Redbrick showing students breaking the plastic bag seals, and a separate video in which two students can be heard informing council workers that they had actually tested themselves using the already-used tests, not just opened them. 

However, Dr. Varney claimed to Redbrick that ‘no one was put at risk.’

When asked whether the scandal has affected trust in the council’s ability to deal with the pandemic, Henry Olendzki said that the situation was ‘a bit grim, but these things do happen.’

Dr. Varney confirmed to Redbrick that it was a ‘mistake’  due to ‘human error’ that will be ‘reflected on.’ Whether this ‘error’ will have any lasting impact on the community of Selly Oak is yet to be seen.

MP for Selly Oak Steve McCabe has expressed his concern regarding the incident, which he has labeled as a ‘serious mistake’: ‘This is the kind of risks we run when we have a makeshift system operated on the cheap.

There are too many organisations involved in testing and I’ve suspected for some time that not everything is up to scratch. It’s one thing that could be rectified during a short circuit break because as this incident and other problems show, we are a million miles from the world beating test, track and trace system that the Prime Minister has fantasised about.’

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