Covid-19: Rapid antigen tests to be rolled out across the country by the end of the week – Stuff.co.nz

Rapid antigen tests will be made available throughout the country this week as Covid-19 cases surge, and tensions rise amidst long queues at community testing centres.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also said on Wednesday the country would move to phase 3 of the Omicron response shortly.

When associate minister of health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced the Governments three-phase Omicron response, she said phase 3 would start when cases are in the thousands.

The Ministry of Health reported 3297 new community cases in its daily update on Wednesday.

The number included 176 in Canterbury, 85 in Nelson-Marlborough, seven in South Canterbury, 455 in Southern (which includes Dunedin and Queenstown), and three new cases on the West Coast.

On Tuesday, 2923 tests were taken in Canterbury, a ministry spokesman said.

The positivity rate for Christchurch yesterday was 6.74 per cent, a massive leap on the rolling four-week average for Canterbury of 0.22 per cent. However, it remains only half the national positivity rate of 12.21 per cent reported on Wednesday.

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Under phase 3, fewer people will be required to self-isolate if they come into contact with a confirmed case of Covid-19.

People who test positive with a rapid antigen test will be able to self-report infections rather than relying on PCR (polymerase chain reaction) lab testing.

From Monday this week, rapid antigen tests were made available at community testing centres in Auckland and were rolled out on Tuesday in Waikato, Bay of Plenty, and Southern health board areas.

They will be available across the country this week, a ministry spokeswoman said.

This may help ease frustration at testing centres where some have been waiting several hours for a PCR test.

Tensions were high at Christchurch's Pages Rd testing centre on Wednesday with some people attempting to jump a long queue, according to traffic management staff.

At one stage the queue stretched several hundred metres down nearby Shortland St.

Ricky Wilson/Stuff

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the country would move to Phase 3 shortly.

On Wednesday, the ministry said there were 6.9 million rapid antigen tests currently in New Zealand, with around 14.7 million expected by the end of the month.

Verrall said on February 1, there were 55 million tests on order and arriving during February and March.

DHBs were preloaded with more than one million rapid antigen tests and are ordering more to meet demand, the spokeswoman said.

Were receiving sufficient volumes of rapid antigen tests to keep up with demand for community testing in phases two and three of the omicron response.

More than five million rapid antigen tests were expected to land at Auckland Airport on Thursday, with another 10 million due to arrive over the weekend, and an additional 50 million were scheduled to arrive in March, the spokeswoman said.

In a statement on February 1, Verrall said modelling suggested as many as nine million rapid antigen tests would be needed each week during the peak of the outbreak.

That scale of testing will go a long way to reducing the risk of an infected person going to work and infecting others, and will help with keeping critical services and supply chains open and moving.

The rapid antigen tests will also relieve challenges for laboratory workers currently struggling to keep up with demand for PCR testing, APEX union organiser David Munro said.

..the pressure on the labs just cant continue, theyve been slammed.

In late January, Verrall said improvements to PCR testing meant the daily maximum tests processed could be increased from 39,000 to 58,000 per day, with a surge capacity of 77,600 per day sustained for up to seven days.

But Munro said this was wrong because pooling of samples was not possible when the positivity rate for Covid-19 tests increased.

He said the "actual" capacity was for 20,000 to 30,000 tests per day.

The union for senior public hospital doctors said the health care workforce was already being affected by Omicron, either through infections, being a close contact, or having to care for children who were close contacts at a school or early learning centre.

If your kid is under 14 theyre lawfully not allowed to stay at home on their own...so that will take a toll on the workforce, Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) executive director Sarah Dalton said.

She understood Wairarapa, Northland and Counties Manakau were reporting staffing pressure as a result of Covid-19-affected schools.

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Covid-19: Rapid antigen tests to be rolled out across the country by the end of the week - Stuff.co.nz