Getting an antigen test in Lanzarote's pharmacies became an impossible mission during Christmas, but the shortage has come to an end. "Finally there are tests and there will continue to be", stated the president of the College of Pharmacists, Loreto Gómez.
Thus, she considers the "problem" that began in mid-November and worsened in December to be over, coinciding with the arrival of the Ómicron variant with company meals and Christmas gatherings, which many tried to attend after having previously taken a test.
"It was a combination of events that caused the need for the test to multiply. Both for prevention and because this variant was very contagious, many more tests were needed than anyone could have foreseen. Then the production was short, but that happened in the Canary Islands, it happened in Spain and it happened in Europe," explains Loreto Gómez.
"The virus is a little ahead of us. We have to learn from what it teaches us," adds the president of the College, also recalling what happened with the lack of masks at the beginning of the pandemic. Now, just as it happened then, she insists that it has already been resolved.
"Production is higher and prices have fallen again," she added. And the other problem was how much the cost of those tests soared. "As demand rose, prices rose. They began to offer them to us at prices higher than what we were charging in retail sales," she says.
Regarding the proposal that was considered that these tests could be sold in other places, such as large stores, as is the case in other European countries, the president of the College of Pharmacists considers that these establishments cannot provide healthcare, for example to explain the use of the product.
Regarding the possibility that this would influence a further drop in prices, Loreto Gómez asks companies that believe they can get tests at lower prices to make them available to pharmacies. "We will make them available to the population at their price. Because El Corte Inglés does not reach all the small towns, but pharmacies do," she defended.
