Testing a sample, the price is set by the government. On May 3rd, Beijing Medical Insurance Bureau announced that the prices of single nucleic acid test and mixed nucleic acid test were 19.7 yuan/person and 3.4 yuan/person respectively. The Bureau of Health Knowledge understands that this is the highest price, including all the expenses of reagent consumables, distribution, testing and sampler manpower. The inspection price quoted by the receiving institution shall not be higher than this.
In other words, Dabai's salary and every cotton swab used are included in the total price.
On April 29th this year, Guangdong just collected nucleic acid detection reagents, including reagent collection tubes, cotton swabs, preservation solutions, extraction reagents and detection reagents. The lowest bid price is 5.79 yuan. If the lowest cost per cotton swab is 1 cent, then the material cost is at least 6.7 yuan.
Counting down, the money given by the government for the mixed inspection of ten people is 34 yuan, and the cost of materials is only 6.7 yuan. It's really a good deal.
But if you add labor cost, equipment investment and sinking cost, the conclusion will be very different.
"Urgent recruitment of nucleic acid sampler, monthly salary 1 10,000." Recently, many third-party inspection institutions are recruiting temporary nucleic acid testing samplers, requiring applicants to have a nurse qualification certificate or a PCR qualification certificate, with a daily salary ranging from 300 to 500 yuan.
Compared with reagent consumables, it costs only a few dollars. At present, people occupy a lot of expenses in the whole detection process. According to the Economic Observer, the value of sampling nurses as a scarce resource has been rising, and some of them have reached 800 yuan/day.
However, not every "Dabai" can earn this daily salary of nearly 1,000 yuan. The Health Knowledge Bureau learned from relevant people that the sampling personnel at the current testing points are generally uniformly distributed by the health centers in various districts. "People mainly from third-party testing institutions will be supported by doctors from hospitals."
In order to supplement manpower, some communities also recruit doctors with experience in nucleic acid testing as sampling volunteers, and they often have no subsidies.
The sampling amount of each sampler per day is limited. According to media reports in Bazhong City, Sichuan Province, during the "May Day" this year, some local medical staff responsible for nucleic acid detection took more than 1000 samples per day. This is already a large sample.
As mentioned earlier, the government paid 34 yuan for the mixed inspection of 10 people, and the sampling cost of "Dabai" was about 5 yuan. In other words, the sampling labor cost and consumables account for one third of the detection income.
Huge hardware investment
After the sampling is completed, the third party organization shall be responsible for transferring the samples to the inspection laboratory. The real big investment is also in the laboratory.
Inspection institutions must first obtain the corresponding qualifications to engage in nucleic acid detection business in COVID-19, such as the practice license of medical institutions, and the filing of pathogenic microorganism laboratories. There must be corresponding professionals behind these qualifications. To apply for the Practice License of Medical Institutions, it is necessary to have more than 2 inspectors with deputy senior titles and more than 5 technicians with primary titles.
In addition to professionals, the cost of venues and equipment requires a lot of investment.
Take the controversial Chaoan Medicine as an example. The officially disclosed detection capability is "80,000 tubes per day". A person from a testing company told the Health Knowledge Bureau that this testing amount means that in addition to various supporting equipment such as nucleic acid extractor and sample adding instrument, at least 80 PCR instruments are needed.
At present, there are many domestic products of PCR instrument, but the unit price is about10.5 million, and the imported products may cost more than 300 thousand. The detection capacity of 80,000 tubes means that tens of millions of PCR equipment will be invested.
According to the data of Sky Eye Survey, about 60% of medical inspection institutions in China have registered capital of more than 6.5438+million yuan.
Under the background of normalization of nucleic acid detection, it is impossible for inspection institutions not to spend money. A person from a testing enterprise in Beijing told the Health Bureau: At present, the efficiency management of the tripartite testing institutions in Beijing is very strict. "Once there is a backlog of test results, I may not send you a bill next time."
In addition to the equipment investment, the hardware investment in the laboratory is also big. There is a risk of sample contamination and virus leakage in nucleic acid detection, and the laboratory construction should meet the requirements. Earlier, some people in the industry told the Health Bureau that laboratories that have done nucleic acid testing are generally unable to undertake other businesses within six months, which is also a factor that enterprises need to consider.
If these devices want to run smoothly, they also need inspectors and auxiliary personnel. According to the data of soochow securities, if all second-tier cities want to conduct 48-hour normalized nucleic acid testing, a total of 730,000 nucleic acid testing personnel are needed. The salary of these professionals is also one of the main costs of testing institutions.
After meeting the above conditions, the inspection institution can enter the "white list" of the Health and Health Commission and wait for dispatch. However, whether to send more or less, single inspection or mixed inspection all changed according to the needs of epidemic prevention and control at that time, and there was great uncertainty.
The business of "joining nucleic acid testing" is far from as beautiful as investors think.
If you want to make money, you can only rely on "normalization"
Since the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, the number of inspection institutions in China has increased rapidly, but due to the above strict requirements, the total amount is not too much. According to the survey data of enterprises, there are 502 existing nucleic acid-related enterprises in China, and 58 newly registered related enterprises in 2020 and 20021year. The growth performance of1year is not outstanding.
For enterprises, nucleic acid testing can indeed "make wealth", but not now.
At the beginning of COVID-19 outbreak, the price of nucleic acid testing once reached 200 yuan/person. High pricing has "revitalized" a large number of enterprises, such as Aidikang, an established third-party testing institution, which earned 210.57 billion yuan in two years by relying on nucleic acid testing business and successfully turned losses into profits.
Since the concept of "15-minute nucleic acid sampling circle" was put forward in early May, there has been an upsurge in the construction of sampling points for nucleic acid detection in various places. As of May 14, Jiangxi, Hubei and Shandong provinces announced to carry out normalized nucleic acid testing in the whole province, and 28 cities including Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou carried out normalized nucleic acid testing in the whole city, covering a population of 420 million, close to 30% of the total population of the country.
According to soochow securities's calculation, if this policy is implemented in all first-and second-tier cities in China, the daily inspection amount of nucleic acids will reach 250 million tubes.