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Paris – Mass testing was meant to be the answer to the wave of the moment. Politicians have promised that with enough rapidly conducted evidence, they can keep the coronavirus under control, without having to go to the locks that paralyzed economies six months ago.
But so far, with a push spreading across Europe as academics return to school and college, it hasn’t worked that way. There aren’t enough tests and they take too long.
Pierre-Adrien Bihl, who runs 4 laboratories that in combination conduct 800 tests a day in the east of France, has an explanation of what’s wrong: a global chain of sources that keeps pace.
“I spend my days verifying that orders have been placed and won and harassing me to deliver, deliver and deliver,” he says, “but all their consumers ask for the same thing. “
French President Emmanuel Macron, like other European leaders, has pushed for an immediate accumulation of checks and his government promises that anyone who wants a check can get it.
But five corporations that function as laboratories in Paris and the east of France told Reuters that there is simply no way to paint faster, as long as they have difficulty unloading chemicals and checking kits produced basically abroad.
This week, Bihl said, had to disconnect his diagnostic device for about 24 hours, after a four-day delay in delivering some single-use parts.
The closure forced Bihl to try the appointments until the arrears could be completed, he said, adding that those stops were taking positions three or four times a month.
Arthur Clement, who runs four laboratories, said the American manufacturer of his diagnostic machine, Cepheid, would finish him only three hundred verification kits a month until the end of summer, as cases increased.
While his laboratories conducted 25,000 tests consisting of one month, Clement had to send almost all of them to a third party, where they took 7 to 10 days to get results, Ceheid responded to a request for comment.
Clement ordered a new diagnostic device two months ago from a South Korean manufacturer, which nevertheless arrived last Friday, and now claims that he can perform all the tests at home and supply effects in one day.
In Paris, queues leave the control centers every day, with lines forming before dawn in some. People with Covid symptoms wait an average of 3 days for their results, according to official data, for some, the wait would possibly be double.
France has lately conducted more than 1. 2 million polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests consistent with the week in reaction to the outbreak, which has killed more than 31,000 people in the country and inflamed nearly a portion of a million.
The French Ministry of Health denies that there is a national shortage of chemicals and says there have been shortages located in some parts of the country, but that it is generally adequate.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said France had reagent materials equivalent to twice the actual demand for evidence.
But labs can’t just order chemicals from anywhere: verification machines require patented chemical kits and tools, some of which can only be received from the manufacturer.
The ministry recommends that laboratories diversify their device vendors to mitigate the threat of source chain locks, but that means buying more devices to double capacity, which costs more and can take months.
French laboratory machine suppliers include Cepheid and Becton Dickinson in the United States, Roche in Switzerland, Biomerieux and Eurobio Scientific in France.
Cepheid, Roche and Eurobio Scientific responded to requests for feedback on the source of Covid devices and reagents.
Becton Dickinson told Reuters in an email that conducts more than a million tests a month worldwide, and stated that it did not meet the lawsuit, although he said it intended to expand to 1. 9 million consistently with the month until the end of 2020. its sites in France had reserve capacity.
Lionel Barrand, one of five lab operators who spoke to Reuters, said the strictest source chain is partly similar to France’s reliance on imported reagents. He estimated that 90% of the Covid-19 reagents used in France came here from abroad.
“We have a lot of market,” said Barrand, who runs a group of commercial laboratories, the Syndicat National des Jeunes Biologistes.
Some French laboratories are involved in U. S. suppliers such as Cepheid and Becton Dickinson prioritizing laboratories in the United States, where fitness prices are high and profit margins are high.
Becton Dickinson said she was assigning check kit fees, which are based on the number of her check machines in a country and the severity of the epidemics.
“We don’t use prices, margins or profits as something in our allocations,” the company said.
Reuters
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