Covid test: Even reduced price is too much – or do I smell corruption?

If it wasn’t a matter of life and death, the announcement on Sunday that the price of the Covid PCR tests in SA’s private sector will go down from R850 per test to R500 would have been laughable.

This comes after an agreement between the Competition Commission and major private laboratories Ampath and Lancet. The commission has said it is also aware that there are some laboratories charging people R1 000 for a PCR test.

It boggles the mind if these labs would want the Covid pandemic to end, given the huge profits they make.

The commission says it started its investigation three months ago after a complaint and, by December, it made a decision to reduce the prices. It also says the price reduction is actually massive because at the start of the pandemic, the cost of a PCR test was R1 400.

The commission emphasised it intervened at the correct time. Yes, sanity has prevailed at last.

Heavy fines must follow if this matter is taken seriously and those who were overcharged should be refunded.

ALSO READ: Competition Commission announces deal to lower price of Covid PCR test to R500

Otherwise, it will seem like the labs have only agreed to reduce the level of corruption. The labs must be transparent
and tell us what these costs are to justify the R500 price tag. In fact, the tests should be free, just as HIV testing is free.

Isn’t the intention to fight Covid, encourage vaccinations and end it?

Under normal circumstances, this will be a welcome development. But this is still a rip-off. Why exactly is this test so expensive? How do the labs justify this price? Are we supposed to celebrate a reduction to R500?

Not more than R100 is what we should pay for a Covid test at a private medical facility and the state should subsidise the costs.

If you are fully vaccinated, tests thereafter should be free.

This begs the question: what really happened to the R500 billion stimulus package? In her recent report, Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke says only 44% of the stimulus package can be accounted for.

With the challenges at the National Prosecuting Authority and President Cyril Ramaphosa delaying to act when he gets reports on corruption, it looks like it will take a long time – if ever – before anyone pays for all these missing funds.

The R500 price is still steep considering the volumes of tests conducted with the omicron emergence. We are in the middle of a pandemic and testing is critical in SA’s strategic response to Covid.

This exorbitant price is a significant barrier to testing, which probably contributes to our higher positivity rate.

Especially now that a person who was tested three months ago might come back for another test, possibly three times. To add more weight, almost everyone is going to test the minute they feel feverish.

Shouldn’t the Competition Commission rather speak to the suppliers of the test kits? One supplier apparently charges R690 per kit.

How can labs be expected to pay R690 for a kit and only charge R500 for a test?

ALSO READ: Covid-19 testing is too expensive and too difficult in South Africa

Something doesn’t add up. About 12 million of the more than 20 million Covid tests performed since March 2020 were conducted by private labs, dominated by Lancet and Ampath, charging about R850 per test.

This is more than R16 billion spent. Are we sure we want to end this pandemic? I feel this intervention is really too late – and dare I say not enough – in the game now.

Free testing will be a sensible way to encourage people to get vaccinated. Covid tests will help avert a lot of resistance against mandatory vaccinations, especially from workers and students when universities reopen in the new year.

In addition to FeesMustFall protests, we are likely to see “mandatory vaccines must fall” protests across
institutions of higher learning.

If we had a functioning government, it wouldn’t be the labs who decide the price of a Covid test and it would not have been as a result of a complaint before the Competition Commission took action.