“It’s unacceptable”, reacts François Braun on the strike for the transmission of Covid tests

“It’s unacceptable,” castigated François Braun, Minister of Health and Prevention about the strike of biologists. It is an arm wrestling which hardens between the biologists and the government. Opposed to savings measures in the social security budget for 2023, biology laboratories no longer retransmit the results of Covid screening tests to SIDEP since Thursday. “They are taking the whole population hostage,” he added to the microphone of Europe 1.

Biology labs on strike

This is one of the measures of the social security financing bill (PLFSS): to save 250 million euros on the prices of current medical biology. But the pill does not pass with biologists, who are upset against this economy, to the point of stopping transmitting the results of Covid screening tests to SIDEP, the National Information System for Population Screening of Covid-19, since Thursday.

For its part, the government justifies itself by mentioning the already high profitability of the laboratories before the crisis and the increased profits linked to their screening activity. “It’s a sector, I’m sorry to say, but which has benefited greatly from the Covid crisis, which has gone from 900 million in profits in 2019 to 1.6 billion in 2020 and to 3 billion in 2021 and that, it’s Social Security money”, detailed François Braun. “Everyone must make an effort so that our health system can survive, so that we can continue to reimburse care for all French people. 250 million, in the current circumstances and from the benefits made by biology, c It’s a reasonable effort,” he said.

How to follow the epidemic?

Are we going to become blind to the Covid-19 epidemic? If the results of the screening tests are no longer transmitted to SIDEP, the National Information System for Population Screening of Covid-19, it then becomes difficult for the government to follow the evolution of the virus on the territory. The Minister of Health and Prevention called on biologists to “come to their senses” and to “stop this kind of maneuver”.