The National Healthcare Security Administration issued a notice on Monday requiring all localities to temporarily include COVID-19 antigen testing reagents and corresponding testing items into basic medical insurance services. Even the newly added drugs for COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment will be temporarily included in the payment scope of the local medical insurance fund.

This is undoubtedly a targeted move. Not long ago, the anti-pandemic authorities under the State Council, China's Cabinet, decided to add antigen testing as a supplement to nucleic acid testing.

Since the application of COVID-19 antigen testing at the national level, the price of COVID-19 antigen testing reagents has dropped from more than 30 yuan ($4.7) per person to 7.9 yuan per person. Nevertheless, if the cost is borne by the people themselves, it will curb the enthusiasm of some people to undergo self-testing.

Making COVID-19 antigen testing temporarily reimbursable might increase people's willingness to undergo early COVID-19 self-testing and cut the virus' transmission chains much sooner.

Whenever there is an outbreak, local governments organize large-scale nucleic acid testing, which not only increases screening costs, but also exhausts medical staff workers. Therefore, the inclusion of COVID-19 antigen testing in the country's medical insurance can promote antigen self-testing by the people, ensure "early detection", and if the result shows "positive", people can be isolated and treated as early as possible, avoiding other people around them from getting infected.

As of March 18, the State Food and Drug Administration had approved 17 COVID-19 antigen testing reagents. It is foreseeable that with the introduction of such kind of antigen testing into local medical insurance, local drug procurement will further drive the price of antigen testing reagents to drop.

The cost of epidemic prevention and control must be calculated on a large scale in order to achieve maximum effects with a minimum cost. The inclusion of the COVID-19 antigen testing in national medical insurance is a move to reduce the overall anti-epidemic cost and increase epidemic prevention and control efficiency.