A TIKTOK craze is helping children to fake positive Covid tests in a bid to stay off school.

Clips of youngsters using various liquids – including apple sauce, Coca Cola, vinegar, hand sanitiser and kiwi fruit – to skew the results of home-based lateral flow tests have racked up millions of views on the app.

Videos uploaded under the search term #fakecovidtest have been viewed more than 6.5 million times, with the dedicated account @.fakecovidtests gaining more than 20,000 followers.

Education leaders have warned that the practice is “massively unhelpful” as schools already battle to keep education going amid outbreaks.

“We are sure this involves a very small minority of pupils, and that for the most part the tests are used correctly,” Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told The i.

“However, we would urge parents to ensure that tests are not being misused, and we would suggest to pupils who are interested in chemical reactions that the best place to learn about them is in chemistry lessons in school.”

One video alone has been viewed more than 2.5 million times since it was uploaded on April 1.

A TikTok spokesperson said: “Our community guidelines make clear that we remove content which includes misleading information that causes harm, including medical misinformation related to Covid-19, and anti-vaccine disinformation more broadly.

“Since the start of the pandemic, we have worked to provide our community with access to trusted information, and through our partnership with Team Halo, scientists from all over the world have shared how vaccinations are created and tested for safety.”