Swab Test Kits For Free Sale, Minister Of Health Budi: We Are Tidying Up

ILLUSTRATION OF DOCK BETWEEN

JAKARTA - Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin said his party was managing the distribution and sale of COVID-19 test kits. The arrangement was made because it was easier for the public to access the test kits without supervision.

"We are currently tidying up the PCR test at home," said Budi at a press conference broadcast on the Presidential Secretariat's YouTube, Monday, February 21.

Budi said that if the test kits were not monitored, it could harm the community.

"We don't want to sell all of these items later. Poor consumers," said the former Deputy Minister of SOEs.

Even so, the Minister of Health said that there were indeed a number of test kits that were appropriate to be used for independent checking. However, this will be announced further in the future.

"We have tested several and it is indeed feasible to use. Later we will publicly announce it specifically from the Ministry of Health," he said.

For information, COVID-19 test kits are indeed widely sold in e-commerce and can be freely available. The price is also cheaper than antigen swab-based testing in the laboratory.

In various e-commerce sites, test kits consisting of test cassettes, extraction tubes, sterilized swabs, dropper tips, and extraction reagents are only priced at Rp. 20 thousand. Meanwhile, for testing in the laboratory, it can reach Rp. 99 thousand per one test.