When you learn at least once a week that you are in contact, it is better to organize yourself. As a precaution or to avoid wasting hours in the queue at the pharmacist, many French people have self-tested in supermarkets.
The government had indeed authorized the sale of non-pharmacy self-tests “exceptionally and until January 31, 2022” to meet the high demand linked to the Omicron variant. Thus, large retailers sold some 16.9 million Covid-19 self-tests for 25 million euros in turnover, between December 28 and January 16, according to the panelist NielsenIQ.
The pharmacists’ monopoly in question
Asked Friday on BFM / RMC whether or not he will continue to sell after the end of January, the president of the strategic committee of E.Leclerc stores, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, explained that he “understood that it was not necessary to ask, but let the decision mechanics do its thing”. “I don’t want to ‘annoy’ the pharmacists, afterwards we have a possible service which is to sell them, find them and sell them cheaper. We are in favor of continuing to sell them for less,” he said.
Before the National Assembly’s law commission on December 29, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran had indicated that it was a “derogation, but in no case should this contravene in the long term the question of the pharmaceutical monopoly for medical devices”. NielsenIQ also took stock of the number of FFP2 masks sold in supermarkets over the last five weeks as of January 16: 18 million masks sold, for a turnover of 5.8 million euros. Note that, “like the self-tests”, they are “sold more in the west and around large cities”.