Up to 20,000 people in Britain who were cleared of having the HIV virus that causes AIDS will have to be retested because of unreliable tests, the government said Friday. The Department of Health said a “small proportion” of people who are HIV positive were falsely given negative results in the test manufactured by Chicago-based drug company Abbott Laboratories Inc. A spokesman for Abbott said it stopped selling the test on March 25 after at least four cases were reported where the test showed negative readings for the antibodies. In Germany the state of Hesse said about 650,000 of the 2 millions kits had been sold in the country. It also recommended new tests for German patients. Swedish and Danish medical authorities had earlier warned that the commonly used test might not be accurate.
