The Tasmanian Government has increased its order for rapid antigen tests from two million to five million and is close to finalising a deal with Australia Post to be a distribution site as testing demand continues to surge statewide.
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But the use of post offices has already prompted concern from a union, which claims workers have not been consulted and could face health risks.
A further update on the use of RAT kits is expected to be provided later on Wednesday after national cabinet meets.
Premier Peter Gutwein said the kits are already available for free in Tasmania for close contacts, to be collected from distribution points in the North, North-West and South after contacting the Public Health hotline.
He said access to RAT kits will increase soon.
"Subject to finalising discussions with Australia Post, which are on foot at the moment, we expect that we will be able to have distribution points across the state in the coming week with Australia Post, which will help in our regional and rural areas," Mr Gutwein said.
Testing sites in all major Tasmanian centres continue to face long waits and surging demand.
State health commander Kathrine Morgan-Wicks said measures were being put in place to ease the strain on the public and testing site workers.
"Since lunchtime on Monday, we have seen a significant surge in demand for testing and we are working to increase capacity to respond to this surge, and pushing out information on exactly who needs to test," she said.
"It may [the Public Health hotline] 24 hours to respond to you with a time at the moment, and you may receive that by SMS or by phone call, as we are implementing SMSs today with a booked appointment time.
"It is fair to say that our systems are experiencing significant demand."
Immediate measures include doubling the capacity of the testing site at Macquarie Point in Hobart from 1000 to 2000 a day with wider lanes and extended opening hours, training more specimen collectors and extending the hours of call centre support to 10pm.
Use of post offices causes union concern
The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union Tasmania has raised concerns about the plans to use Australia Post outlets as distribution centres for RAT kits.
Organiser Paul Sutton said there should have been engagement with workers before a decision was made to put them on the frontline in a health response.
"We see Australia Post and the Gutwein Government having no idea who are the critical people in our supply chains and Covid management, by completely ignoring the most critical part of the plan, frontline workers," he said.
"Very little detail has been provided to workers by Australia Post as usual, what we do know is Tasmania is the first state to be trialing this and it is to start on the 10th of January, next Monday."
Mr Sutton said they wanted guarantees for worker safety.
"Health and safety law allows any workers to cease a task they believe risks their safety, but also to seek proper information and training. Once those fundamentals are in place, we believe that as a publicly owned corporation, Post and government should provide these tests free or very heavily subsidised."
RAT kits could become primary diagnosis source
Public Health director Mark Veitch foreshadowed the expanded use of RAT kits in coming weeks and months as the predominant COVID diagnosis tool.
"It is possible that in the coming weeks we will look to diagnosis based on rapid antigen tests, or perhaps in some instances based on clinical symptoms," he said.
Public Health has already stopped listing public exposure sites due to the large amount, and is instead urging Tasmanians to be wary of the presence of COVID in public places.
Dr Veitch said new definitions for close contacts were being developed.
"We're currently finalising some minor changes to the case and contact definitions that we're going to use so that we've got a feasible and a sustainable and a largely automated approach to managing mostly mild cases and their contacts," he said.
"We'll be focusing as we always have on highest risk contacts - so the people who are most likely to become a case after contact with another case.
"And we're also working on high risk settings such as residential aged care, hospitals, correctional facilities, disability services, where more active management in collaboration with the responsible agencies is very important to limit the spread of COVID."
Real COVID figure could be double
The priority on only immediate close contacts - and a looser definition of close contact - has meant it was difficult for most Tasmanians to obtain a test, unless they could access a RAT kit.
Tasmania has 3118 active cases of COVID after recording a further 867 on Wednesday morning, but Dr Veitch said the actual case number would be far higher.
"It's probably significantly more than we're actually diagnosing. I would say it could be as many as twice as many people as we're actually diagnosing who actually have the infection," he said.
"There will be a substantial number of people with COVID with mild symptoms in the community or even sometimes no symptoms in the community who haven't been tested.
"It's likely that people with symptoms are the most infectious people to other people in the community. It's possible that people without symptoms can infect people, but the people who are most infectious are those with symptoms."
Various business groups in Tasmania were confident that once RAT kits were widely available, demand on testing sites would ease, businesses would have more confidence about the presence of COVID among staff, and sudden closures would decrease.
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