UK retailer rivalry set to push down the price of lateral flow test kits

Several retailers are preparing to start selling Covid-19 testing kits once the British government stops distributing them for free in England, with greater competition set to push prices down.

Boots said on Tuesday that it would sell lateral flow tests, which can be self-administered at home, in around 400 of its 2,200 stores in early March. They will be priced at £ 2.50 each or £ 9 for four. Before then, it will sell tests online for £ 5.99 each.

Superdrug immediately said it would undercut its bigger rival, setting prices at £ 1.99 for a single test or £ 9.79 for a pack of five bought in store. Lloyds Pharmacy is selling a pack of five tests online for £ 9.49.

Wm Morrison, the country’s fourth-largest supermarket chain, also revealed it would sell kits in its 497 stores with pricing to be confirmed, though it is likely to be highly competitive. Other major supermarkets are considering doing likewise, although Lidl and Aldi said they had no current plans to stock tests in the UK.

Amazon, which sells PCR tests on its website said there was “nothing to report at the moment” regarding selling lateral flow tests online.

Some of the larger pharmacy chains will also sell kits. Well Pharmacy, the third-largest operator in the UK, said a decision on pricing “will be made nearer the time”.

The universal provision of free lateral flow tests via the government website and pharmacies will cease in England on April 1, marking the end of one of the largest testing programs in the world and creating a commercial incentive for companies to sell them for the first time.

Free tests will continue to be made available for the over-75s, those with weakened immune systems and certain groups of key workers.

“While it is great that we are returning to normal and finding a way to live with Covid-19, we encourage our customers and patients to stay safe and continue to take measures to limit the spread of the virus,” said Boots’ director of healthcare services Asif Aziz.

Kit prices in the UK look set to be towards the low end of the global scale. In European countries where testing kits are already sold commercially, prices range from less than € 2 per test – Aldi and Lidl both charge € 1.75 in Germany, while Kruidvat charges € 2 in Belgium and the Netherlands – to around € 5.

Elsewhere in the world, prices are much higher. In the US, most at-home tests cost over $ 10 once sales tax is included, while Superdrug’s Hong Kong-based parent AS Watson charges HK89 (about $ 11.50).

Andrew Lane, chair of the National Pharmacy Association, said he expected UK consumers to end up “in quite a good position” on account of “a plethora of sellers entering the market and driving prices down”.

“We think it’s premature to abandon free testing, so at very least retailers who are selling LFTs should get the price down as low as possible,” added Lane.

In response to the Omicron wave, the UK-wide supply of lateral flow tests at the start of the year was ramped up to around 340mn lateral flow tests a month. Although demand is unlikely to reach such levels again – England and Northern Ireland have already announced plans to end the legal requirement to self-isolate pending a negative test result – lateral flow tests will still be mandatory in some circumstances.