Australia's coronavirus testing capacity has been significantly bolstered, with 10 million more COVID-19 tests to be made available over the next month.
Key points:
- Testing machines will be distributed nation-wide
- Health Minister says the test stockpile will last the rest of the year
- Expanded testing is underway to find cases before they spread
The tests are part of the Federal Government's plan to expand the testing regime to search for outbreaks before they happen.
Testing machines and the equipment needed to carry out the tests were bought from China by mining magnate Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's philanthropic Minderoo Foundation.
Mr Forrest said a number of the machines were already functioning and all would be ready for use by the end of May.
He said the foundation set aside $320 million to contribute towards fighting the pandemic, but will be repaid for the tests by the Federal Government "over time" interest-free.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt thanked Mr Forrest and said the tests were an integral part of the "rapid response" arm of the Government's plan to recover from the virus.
"What these 10 million tests will do is allow our state and territory public health units to be able to test right through 2020.
"[They] provide us with the capacity to contain, suppress and defeat the virus but also if a case were to emerge, to find it and to find everybody around."
Both the Government and senior health officials have flagged the next stage of testing will be "sentinel surveillance" — where authorities begin to look for cases in areas or people not showing signs of the virus.
Testing part of recovery process
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly welcomed the additional tests, saying having access to that volume was a "remarkable change" from where Australia was a few weeks ago when resources were more limited.
"Twiggy Forrest, through this foundation, now has a secure supply line that was a problem for us some months ago when we really needed to do a lot of laboratory testing," he said.
"Those tests will be very important as we plot the way out of our current restrictions."
Mr Hunt said a few more than 500,000 tests had been completed in the past two-and-a-half months and the additional tests increased capacity "20 fold" from now until the end of the year.
"Today boosts that capacity significantly and in a sustainable and reliable way," he said.
"Above that, we know that this assists our tracing."
The Health Minister also echoed comments from the Prime Minister about Australians who had downloaded the Government's COVIDSafe app, saying he wanted to "thank and honour them".
Scott Morrison has declared Australia is "not too far away" from lifting coronavirus restrictions, but people should expect new cases to emerge and expanded testing would be important in helping detect them early.
"It adds to what we're doing with the testing.
"It's all part of our process of a way back and recovering."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA0LTI5L21pbGxpb25zLW9mLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXRlc3RzLW9uLXdheS1hZnRlci1wdXJjaGFzZS1ieS1mb3JyZXN0LzEyMTk3Mjc20gEnaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEyMTk3Mjc2?oc=5
2020-04-29 06:01:19Z
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