The team at Follow the Money (FTM), an investigative journalism site in the Netherlands, published details on the main bottle neck facing COVID-19 tests for the public in the Netherlands. The authors, based on interviews with sources within the health sector of that country, have identified that approximately 80% of machines that can test for COVID-19 are devices manufactured by Roche. Delving deeper, FTM highlights the shortage of the proprietary lysis buffer, which is used to break open the cells of the COVID-19 virus, has the main stumbling block to testing at the levels that the Netherlands needs to.
Members of Parliament have been vocal in pressuring Roche to release the formula to allow local manufacturers in producing the sought after liquid. Roche meanwhile has released a statement, disputing the shortage of the lysis buffer as claimed by the Dutch Government. They further state “Use the available tests only for those who show clear symptoms”, which unfortunately has not proven effective as approximately 60% of those infected with COVID-19 show little to no symptoms.
It is unknown to what extent Roche’s earnings will decline if the formula for the lysis buffer is shared, although it is unlikely to dent the pharmaceutical giant’s revenues, which have totaled a staggering 549 Billion CHF over the past 11 years.
This is while some of top executives at the company have been compensated to a tune of 35 Million CHF for the 2019 reporting period.
How these numbers could change based on the lost goodwill will only be known next year.