Why the heavy public bill for Covid tests is a good sign

Emmanuel Duteil, edited by Gauthier Delomez 5:12 p.m., January 18, 2022

EDITORIAL

With French people getting tested more and more regularly, the bill for Covid tests is skyrocketing in France.

For the month of January, it should reach one and a half billion euros in costs for the State according to the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, Olivier Dussopt.

A surge in the number of tests under the effect of the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

For the editorialist Emmanuel Duteil, this investment in tests and vaccination is necessary to better understand the epidemic, and not to put the economy under a glass again.

Knowing the epidemic and better understanding it

The bill of one billion euros was already stratospheric in December. But that was without taking into account the contagiousness of the Omicron variant, and without taking into account the mess of protocols at school which require children to be repeatedly tested. This is why public finances are being emptied as quickly as the lines of pharmacies and laboratories are getting longer. Pharmacies are paid by Health Insurance 36 euros per test. The network of pharmacists does exceptional work in this area on a daily basis. If we only had to do PCRs, the bill would be even heavier.

But, a question can legitimately arise: is this billion and a half euros just for the month of January well spent?

Undoubtedly yes.

The more we test ourselves, the more we know about the epidemic and the more we can understand it.

The development of self-tests, which are certainly sometimes more difficult to find than the immunity collar in

, will also become a substitute when most specialists dare to sketch an improvement on the front of the epidemic.

A way to save money.

But on this point, we can say hats off to the government.

After missing the launch of the tests, France is one of the countries in the world where free is the most developed.

So it really is a public health measure.

Vaccination at the service of the French economy

But this billion and a half euros is added to the cost of vaccination.

According to the calculations of the Minister of Public Accounts, the vaccination bill last year reached just over five billion euros.

This year, it will still be several billion, according to Olivier Dussopt.

Between the lines, we understand that it should be lower than last year's cost.

But then again, this expense is not debatable.

It was necessary to vaccinate at a forced march.

It always costs less than having to shut down our economy.

One could almost speak of an investment.

It is indeed vaccination that should allow France to record one of the strongest rebounds in its history in 2021.

The hope of the development of treatments

It is therefore money well spent, but the most important thing is not there.

Ultimately, the most important thing is the development of treatments.

We've been focusing on vaccines for months.

It's a good thing, but we will only get out of this epidemic if we know how to treat it on a daily basis.

And on that, hopes are finally very high.

Paxlovid, Pfizer's anti-Covid pill is coming soon.

It will be a real treatment once the first symptoms are diagnosed.

The Pfizer pill will also be produced partly in France.

In any case, this is what his boss announced on Monday.

And this is only the beginning: several large laboratories will also soon market their own treatments.

It would be good if at some point, Sanofi, our tricolor laboratory, did not miss the appointment.