What began as a moonshot became mundane. Mass Covid-19 testing overcame initial scepticism to become a mainstay of pandemic planning — and a money-spinner for test providers. Witness the record SFr1.9bn ($1.99bn) of test sales chalked up by Swiss pharma giant Roche in the first quarter, up 58 per cent on a year earlier. But it now appears the western market has peaked. Mass vaccination has radically reduced the severity of coronavirus — and the need to test for it.
Roche on Monday reiterated guidance that sales of Covid medicines and diagnostics would fall by more than a quarter to about SFr5bn this year. US rival Abbott last week predicted a rapid fall-off in test sales after notching up a bumper $3.3bn in the first quarter. Massachusetts-based Thermo Fisher also expects the vast majority of its anticipated $1.75bn of its 2022 testing revenues to be in the first half of the year.
The slowdown reflects a pullback by governments. The UK ended free mass testing at the start of April. Denmark, the biggest per head spender on Covid testing, has drastically cut back. The provision by the Biden administration of 1bn free tests in response to the Omicron coronavirus variant is winding down, though Abbott recently inked a $1bn contract with the US army.