London (AFP)

In Biogroup's Covid-19 screening center in Notting Hill, an affluent area of ​​London, two technicians in white coats wait for the barge.

At the end of thirty minutes, a man who is going on a trip comes to have the sample taken and leaves immediately.

During the Christmas holidays, customers came and went, but since then, with the spread of new variants and a re-containment in England, demand, mostly from travelers, has dropped from 350 people per day to around 150 on the four London centers of Biogroup UK.

The founders of this subsidiary of the eponymous group of French medical analyzes, a leader in the French market, however believe in their bet to establish themselves in the United Kingdom thanks to the epidemic.

"Our strategy is opportunistic: there was a health crisis and we put our resources at the service of the English and London population", explains to AFP Thomas Leclerc, co-founder of Biogroup UK and director of the West France region, in the gleaming London analysis laboratory where a handful of laboratory assistants are busy amid dozens of diagnostic machines.

With Astrid Gouillard, co-founder of Biogroup UK, they are betting on a demand for screening tests in the face of the pandemic which they believe will last, despite the ongoing vaccination campaign.

"Given the evolution, I do not believe that we will be out of it in two, three months, it is a market which is likely to last 6 months, a year, even more. In my opinion, the carriers will ask to do a PCR test anyway at least all year 2021 ", argues this biologist and pharmacist by training, who has lived in London since 2004.

Everything happened really fast.

"In September, having failed to get tested, I told myself that I was going to start a Covid testing laboratory. In England, it's much easier than in France," she says.

The first testing center opened in mid-December, counting down to the effective entry into force of Brexit on January 1.

- British faults -

Biogroup UK is banking on the flaws in the UK screening system.

Unlike France, where a vast network of private medical analysis laboratories perform the tests which are then reimbursed by social security, the British public health system, the NHS, does most of it.

"The private sector represents only 5%", according to Ms. Gouillard.

This meager market share can therefore hardly supplement the public system which is congested during health crises as it is now.

In addition, while in France everyone can be tested for free at will in a pharmacy or laboratory, in the United Kingdom, only people with symptoms benefit from Covid-19 screening by the NHS, except during one-off testing campaigns and local.

For contact cases, those who want to travel or visit a person at risk, the private is the only option, except to lie to the NHS about his situation.

In addition, the overwhelmed NHS provides these tests sometimes with a delay of several days, which can invalidate testing.

Biogroup provides 24 hour testing, which it considers essential for effective tracing.

But, even though Biogroup claims its prices are in the low range in London, they are high - £ 135 per person.

For a family, or a business, the bill goes up very quickly.

Some companies that Biogroup is discussing with a view to contracts so that they can test their employees are thinking twice.

"We have invested, we cannot do these tests (for nothing), unless we have volume," explains Astrid Gouillard.

"The fact that these comfort PCR tests are not taken into account by the public sector is a market for us, on the other hand, the volumes are mechanically reduced. So the capacity to amortize the teams, the equipment, the premises remains limited, hence a price level higher than that of France ", adds Thomas Leclerc.

Biogroup UK therefore sees in the "long term" to develop a medical biology offer in England "beyond Covid-19, which would be able to supplement the needs of the public sector" when there are crises or needs to develop new technologies ".

© 2021 AFP