According to the Minister of Health Jan Blatný, testing was to start in homes for the elderly and other facilities as early as Wednesday in order to reduce the spread of the disease, especially among vulnerable older people. However, due to missing legal requirements, the start of testing will be delayed.
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The List of Messages has already warned of the impending delay. Although two million antigen tests have been available from Abbott since the weekend, according to the Ministry of Health, there is still work to be done on how the General Health Insurance Company will pay for them.
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VZP and other health insurance companies now cannot simply buy tests from the manufacturer because the laws do not allow it. A contract with the supplier company Avenier, which would buy the tests and deliver them at the same time, proved to be a possible starting point.
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However, the agreement between the insurance companies and Avenier is still not concluded. Distribution and subsequent testing thus move away from the original schedule. According to measures The Ministry of Health must carry out the first wave of testing in all homes no later than next Wednesday, 11 November.
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“Negotiations between insurance companies and Avenier are still ongoing,” the head of VZP, Zdeněk Kabátek, wrote Seznam Reports on Thursday afternoon. When asked when he expects to conclude the contract, he replied that he did not know.
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Even under Avenier, the situation is still unresolved. “Currently, the issue of state saturation by antigenic tests for social facilities has not been decided,” wrote List of Reports Martin Nesrsta, executive director of vaccination centers of the company, which belongs to the Agel medical group of entrepreneur Tomáš Chrenk.
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According to Jiří Horecký, President of the Association of Social Service Providers of the Czech Republic, the tests must be dismissed as soon as possible.
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“Distribution has not even begun. An agreement between VZP and Avenier should have been signed, and according to them, the distribution should start in the coming days, “Seznam told Horecký reports.
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If the contract was not signed until Friday, it would mean deliberation over the weekend, which he said is problematic.
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It follows from Horecký’s words that in such a case the beginning of testing would not have to be completed on time. “The tests have to be delivered to about 1,400 addresses, half of which do not work on Saturdays and Sundays. In order to start testing from Wednesday, we would have to have all the tests by Monday, “he explained.
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The name of the manufacturer of the first batch of two million tests, the American concern Abbott Laboratories, was not revealed until Tuesday. At first, Minister Blatný did not want to divulge him. “The tests are produced by a larger number of suppliers and it was decided not to prefer one supplier,” he said on Tuesday.
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Abbott is one of the major global players in the medical device market. For example, she also supplied antigen tests, which show results within 15 minutes, for the office of US President Donald Trump in the White House.
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