The president of the Barcelona Medical Association, Jaume Padrós, has just issued a strong rebuke about the scandalous price of antigen (or lateral flow) tests, echoing a general indignation which has been widely expressed on social media. To some extent, the same applies to PCRs, for which you have to pay an arm and a leg in order to get round the blockage found in public health centres. How is it possible that just when they are most needed, due to the runaway growth of Catalonia's current sixth wave, they jump from an expensive but affordable price, to a situation where they are sold out, and then to a coup de grace in which they reappear with a new price increase? How can it be that the Spanish government is not acting to limit the maximum retail price of these tests?
It has even done something worse: it has recommended making use of antigen tests at family gatherings this holiday season and has paved the way for someone in the middle to fatten their wallet with prices that are far higher than those paid in countries around us. Jaume Padrós said on Sunday that he saw one of the cheapest prices in a pharmacy, with the test kit on sale for 5.95 euros. Around Spain, it has been reported that prices of up to 10 or 12 euros per test have been charged by pharmacies in the last few days in which there has been so much demand. Meanwhile, in France, they are free for those who are vaccinated, in Portugal they cost around 2 euros, and they are also free in the United Kingdom, where every citizen has the right to request two tests a week. And so we could go on.
The question is simple: why not in Spain? Isn't this talked about at the Spanish minister's meetings with her regional counterparts? What simply cannot be allowed to go on is for families to have to get used to a fixed monthly expense, such as for electricity - also, of course, on the rise - gas, or food while the Spanish government continues to sit with its arms folded. In the Catalan case, we can also demand that the health minister, Josep Maria Argimon, take a proposal to the negotiating table to reduce the price of antigen tests. PCRs too.
Those who govern, in their ivory towers, often respond late to such demands, as there are no demonstrations in the streets, nor are political parties taking up the issue as most of them are in power in one place or another and doing not very much to find a solution. It is to be hoped that, in the same way that medical leaders are quoted on questions such as the closure of businesses or a curfew, their voices will also be heard when they make a demand that is ultimately as necessary as it is urgent for the public as a whole.