Testing a sample, the price is set by the government. on May 3, the Beijing Municipal Health Insurance Bureau announced that the price of nucleic acid testing for single and mixed tests is 19.7 yuan per person and 3.4 yuan per person, respectively. Health Knowledge Bureau learned: this is the maximum price, including all reagents and supplies, distribution, testing, sampling manpower and other full costs. Order-taking organizations reported test prices may not be higher than this.
In other words, the "big white" salary, used up every swab, are calculated in the total price.
April 29 this year, Guangdong has just conducted a nucleic acid test reagents procurement, including a reagent collection tube, a swab, a preservation solution, an extraction reagent and a test reagent, including the "nucleic acid test kit", the lowest bid is 5.79 yuan. If the minimum 10 cents per swab, ten mixed a mixed test, the cost of materials is at least 6.7 yuan.
Calculated, ten mixed one mixed test government money is 34 yuan, the material cost is only 6.7 yuan, indeed good business.
But if you add in labor costs, equipment inputs, and sunk costs, the conclusion is very different.
"Urgently recruit nucleic acid sampler, monthly salary of 10,000." Recently, many third-party testing organizations are recruiting temporary nucleic acid testing sampler, requiring candidates to have a nurse's license or PCR qualification, daily salary ranging from 300-500 yuan.
Compared to the cost of only a few dollars of reagents and supplies, people, occupies a large amount of the entire testing link in the current overhead. According to the Economic Observer, as a scarce resource, the price of sampling nurses has been rising, some have reached 800 yuan / day.
But not every "big white" can earn the nearly 1,000 yuan a day. Health Knowledge Bureau learned from relevant sources, at present, the testing point sampling staff generally by the health center of each district unified allocation, "to the third-party testing organizations, but also from the hospital to transfer doctors to support".
To supplement staffing, some communities also independently recruit doctors with experience in nucleic acid testing as sampling volunteers, who are often not subsidized.
Each sampler has a limited number of samples per day. According to media reports in Bazhong City, Sichuan Province, some of the local health care workers responsible for nucleic acid testing sampled more than 1,000 people each day during May 1 this year. This is already a large sampling volume.
As mentioned earlier, the government pays $34 for a 10-person mixed test, and the cost of sampling the "Great White" is about $5. In other words, sampling labor costs + consumables, it accounts for one-third of the testing revenue.
Hardware investment is huge
After sampling, the third-party organization is responsible for transferring the samples to the testing laboratory. The really big investment is also in the lab.
The testing organization needs to first obtain the "Medical Institution Practice License", pathogenic microorganisms laboratory filing and other appropriate qualifications to engage in the new crown nucleic acid testing business. Behind these qualifications to have the corresponding professionals, apply for a "medical institution license" need to have more than two associate title of the examiner, five junior title technician and other requirements.
In addition to professionals, the cost of premises and equipment requires a large investment.
Taking the controversial Chaoan Medicine as an example, the official disclosure of the testing capacity is "80,000 tubes per day". A testing company source told the Health Knowledge Bureau: This testing volume means that it needs to configure at least 80 PCR machines alone, in addition to various supporting equipment such as nucleic acid extractors and sampling instruments.
PCR instrument now has a lot of domestic goods, but the unit price is also about 150,000 yuan, imported products may be more than 300,000 yuan. 80,000 tubes of detection capacity, means that tens of millions of dollars to invest in the purchase of PCR equipment.
According to eyeball data, about 60% of the country's medical testing organizations registered capital of more than 10 million yuan.
In the context of the normalization of nucleic acid testing, testing organizations do not smash money can not be fooled. Beijing, a testing business person told Health Knowledge Bureau: the current three-party testing organizations in Beijing on the efficiency of the management is very strict. "Once there is a backlog of test results, the next time you may not send you a single."
In addition to equipment investment, the test laboratory hardware investment is also a large piece. Nucleic acid testing there is a risk of sample contamination, virus leakage, laboratory construction to meet the requirements. Previously, an industry source told the Health and Knowledge Bureau that laboratories that have done nucleic acid testing are generally unable to take on another business within six months, which is a factor that companies need to consider.
These equipments also need testers and support staff for smooth operation. According to data from Dongwu Securities, if all second-tier cities were to implement 48-hour regular nucleic acid testing, a total of 730,000 nucleic acid testers would be needed***. The salary of these professionals is also one of the major costs for testing organizations.
After reaching the above conditions, the testing organization can enter the health commission on the "white list", waiting to send a single. But send more or less, single test or mixed test, are based on the needs of the epidemic prevention and control at the time of change, there is a great deal of uncertainty.
The business of "joining nucleic acid testing" is far less beautiful than stockholders think.
Want to make money, can only rely on "normalization"
Since the 2020 new crown epidemic, the number of testing organizations in China is growing rapidly, but due to the strict requirements mentioned above, the total amount is not much. Enterprise search data show that the domestic existing nucleic acid-related enterprises 502, 2020 and 2021 total **** newly registered 58 related enterprises, the number of growth in the past 10 years is not outstanding.
For enterprises, nucleic acid testing can indeed "create wealth", but not now.
At the beginning of the epidemic, pricing for nucleic acid tests reached $200 per person. High pricing had "revitalized" a large number of enterprises, such as the old third-party testing organization Adicon, nucleic acid testing business in 2 years earned 2.157 billion yuan, successful performance turnaround.
Since the beginning of May, "15-minute nucleic acid 'sampling circle'" concept put forward, around a wave of nucleic acid testing sampling point construction boom. As of May 14, Jiangxi, Hubei and Shandong provinces announced that the whole province will carry out regular nucleic acid testing, and Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and other 28 cities will carry out regular nucleic acid testing, covering 420 million people, close to 30% of the country's total population.
According to the projections of Soochow Securities, if all first- and second-tier cities in the country implement this policy, the number of daily nucleic acid tests will reach 250 million tubes.