Shopping giant Amazon’s attempts to take on the UK’s COVID-19 testing market has been hit with a major setback – the company has run out of the essential components necessary for the tests and it doesn’t know when they will be back in stock.
Amazon was set to completely shake up the travel testing market when it started offering gold-standard RT-PCR tests earlier this month for just £34.99. Those plans have now been left in tatters, at least temporarily, as the company desperately tries to source all the necessary components like swabs and buffing solution.
Warning on its website that it doesn’t “know when or if this item will be back in stock”, Amazon says it has been hit by the high global demand for tests amidst the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.
A spokesperson for Amazon told us: “There has been very strong demand from customers for our affordable at-home PCR tests. Global demand for test kit components is high and we are working hard with our suppliers to make this product available again.”
“We advise customers to check the product pages on Amazon.co.uk for updates.”
The Amazon-branded PCR tests are currently unlisted but the product page can be found here. At more than half the price of travel compliant Day 2 tests sold by most test providers, Amazon was a popular choice for at-home unsupervised testing that provided results in less than 24-hours after reaching the lab.
Unlike other test providers, Amazon was testing samples in its own purpose-built lab in Salford. The lab was originally created for Amazon’s in-house employee testing programme which is expected to continue even while the consumer testing programme is suspended.
Along with individual tests, Amazon was also offering discounted bundles to further reduce the cost of testing for families and frequent travellers. The travel testing was only available for the UK market and will resume once stocks have been replenished.
