Is Britain’s Covid test shortage unique, and is Brexit to blame?

Analysis: Countries like Ireland and the United States are seeing similar shortages — but other countries have imposed limits on test distribution

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A shortage of Covid home test kits is hitting the UK – with supply chain issues being blamed.

For weeks, the NHS website has been running out of kits almost as soon as they become available, and pharmacies in the highest demand area have also run dry.

Despite some commentary suggesting otherwise, this shortage is not unique to the UK – although the picture is complex and different countries have different issues depending on how tests are used.

Britain’s emphasis on testing, and the availability of free home kits, is among the reasons for particularly high demand.

One country facing similar problems is Ireland, which has a similar system for distributing the lateral flow kits: they are in theory available for free in pharmacies, or ordered from a government website.

But Ireland's website was actually suspended ahead of Christmas because of stock issues, and pharmacies have reported a drop in deliveries.

France and Belgium have also faced a run on tests in recent months, with shortages in some pharmacies hitting the headlines in France at the beginning of December, and Belgium in November.

But while the lateral flow kit shortage is not limited to the UK – and thus unlikely to be the result of supply issues such as Brexit – the problem is far from universal. Each country has taken a slightly different strategy in tackling Covid, and the way home testing kits are used as part of the wider ecosystem of policies is the a major effect on supply.

In Britain, the tests are required to come out of self-isolation early, and the government's messaging has heavily emphasised at-home testing as a way of keeping safe – especially ahead of seeing family members at Christmas. It is unsurprising, therefore, that demand is particularly high.

But the approach taken by the UK has not been mirrored in all European countries. Germany and Greece, for example, are two EU member states that stopped offering free tests, after health authorities argued that the availability of free, rapid, at-home testing was discouraging people from getting a vaccine. If someone thinks they can stay safe or access events simply by testing, they might see it as an alternative to getting a jab.

Both countries began imposing charges for tests, with some exemptions for people on low incomes and other categories. Pharmacists in Germany have said this has significantly hit demand. Unsurprisingly, shortages have not really been an issue in either country. While vaccination was the publicly stated reasoning for imposing charges in both countries, the backdrop of an international run on at home kits was inevitably the context.

Supply in all countries is also inevitably affected by one-off factors, such as whether a particular contractor has actually delivered tests on time, or whether delivery services are overstretched.

In Britain, distribution issues at Royal Mail and Amazon have sometimes been blamed. In this respect, the shortage of tests is similar to the situation in the early days of Covid vaccine distribution, with supplies limited in various countries but not others, often for reasons that would have been difficult to predict.

Indeed, concerns about a shortage of tests is nothing new – it been voiced across Europe at different times since March 2020. And the situation is not limited to Europe; on the other side of the Atlantic in the US there are similar problems, which Joe Biden’s administration is grappling with.