Big Pharma Roche sabotages anti-coronavirus fight

This 24 March 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

Why The U.S. Can’t Process Coronavirus Tests As Fast As South Korea l FiveThirtyEight

In South Korea, COVID-19 patients can get test results in 24 hours.

Read Maggie’s article for more on how the coronavirus test works.

Translated from Dutch NOS radio today:

Pharmaceutical corporation Roche stands in the way of more tests for coronavirus‘

The fact that the Netherlands cannot test en masse for the coronavirus is due to too great a dependence by Dutch laboratories on pharmaceutical corporation Roche. That writes Follow the Money. The Swiss company is the market leader and cannot provide enough tests, but also does not want to help laboratories by, for example, making the formulation of an important liquid available.

A majority of the Dutch laboratories work with Roche machines and are largely dependent on the test materials supplied by the pharmaceutical corporation. The shortages are not easy to solve, because there is a vendor lock-in; whoever uses Roche machines must also use Roche materials.

A few days ago, physician-microbiologist Vossen expressed in De Volkskrant daily the hope that Roche would share this recipe with the Dutch laboratories. Follow the Money therefore asked the pharmaceutical corporation whether it is willing to share the prescription, but Roche did not want to answer that.

See also here.