The Ministry of Health is extending a guarantee scheme with seven major corona test labs until the end of this year. As a result, they are guaranteed to be paid until December 31 for analyzing tens of thousands of corona tests, even if those tests are not taken by the GGD.
The extension will cost a maximum of 13.5 million euros, according to documents sent to the House of Representatives. According to the ministry, it is necessary because a tender process worth hundreds of millions of euros for the analysis of corona tests expires in the autumn.
With the guarantee, the Netherlands will for the time being have the option of having a maximum of 120,700 corona tests analyzed per day. That is much more than is needed now. Currently, about 20,000 people are tested daily at the GGD, at the highest point in March there were 90,000 per day.
summary proceedings
The cause of the delay in the tender is a lawsuit brought by the Austrian laboratory Novogenia against the ministry. According to that lab, it is unfair that only two large laboratories will be contracted by the Netherlands this autumn. The rest of the corona test market goes to smaller Dutch laboratories.
As long as the summary proceedings are pending and the tender has not yet been awarded, the old guarantee scheme will continue to exist, so the ministry has now decided. “The guarantees have worked well so far to guarantee testing capacity, because the guarantees allow laboratories to always provide sufficient analytical capacity,” the ministry writes.
The extension of the guarantee scheme mainly benefits labs that will no longer analyze tests for the Netherlands after the award of the new tender. Although Novogenia does not currently have an agreement with the ministry, the summary proceedings are supported by several labs that do receive guarantees, reported de Volkskrant earlier.
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