Australia’s Covid testing situation has been labelled “dire”, as pharmacies warn of home testing kit shortages and wait times for PCR results hit up to a week.
Australia does not have adequate stocks to deal with the soaring demand for rapid antigen tests, the nation’s pharmacy boss has revealed.
“We do have regional outages and there will be a delay before more stock enters the pipeline,” Pharmacy Guild of Australia president Trent Twomey told news.com.au.
“I think it’s a sensible approach that we change from mandatory PCR to mandatory rapid antigen tests.
“The pathology system is not coping and (doesn’t have) the adequate turnarounds that are needed to not disrupt people’s travel plans, but in order to do that we need to have adequate stock of these rapid antigen tests, and at this very point in time we don’t.”
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Professor Twomey said Australia was airfreighting what it could from overseas and domestically tests were being repackaged from bulk into retail packs.
However, it was a short-term fix and he predicted Australians would continue to see shortages over the next two to three weeks.
At Prof Twomey’s own pharmacies in Far North Queensland, the stores were down to just dozens of tests.
Multinational pharmaceutical company Hough Pharma’s chief executive, Greg Hough, said the testing situation was “pretty dire” at the moment and demand was “out of control”.
“The supply issue is basically timing,” he told Today on Tuesday, saying tests are basically sold as soon as they’re brought into Australia.
“So, it’s a catch-up time. And obviously major retailers do have supplies. We’re bringing supplies in every week to these guys at the moment. We are continuing to do that and working 24 hours a day to do it.”
Coles and Woolworths sell Hough Pharma home test kits at their service desks and online.
At Coles, customers are limited to buying two packs, and while the company said demand is growing, there’s good availability in stores. Online, five packs are sold out but two packs are available.
Woolworths restricts sales to a maximum of 10 self-test kits, either five x two packs or two x five packs. It has sold out of both online.
“We are doing everything we can to keep up with the surge in demand,” a Woolworths spokesman said.
The company’s digital health and wellness online business HealthyLife has shipped over 100,000 rapid antigen tests to customers since the start of November and said demand nearly doubled in the lead up to Christmas.
Should rapid antigen tests be funded by the government?
Prof Twomey said as Australia moves towards mandatory rapid antigen tests in place of PCR tests, they should be funded by the government – but not all.
He says taxpayers should not have to fund people who are getting a test for peace of mind when heading to a non-essential social event, but it should be funded for those who are required to test for work or travel around Australia.
And that would be a supervised rapid antigen test at a pharmacist or GP where the result is recorded on a database.
“It doesn’t mean people can rock up to the pharmacy or rock up to the service station and say I’ll have free packs of rapid antigen tests please,” Prof Twomey explained.
Mr Hough said he thought the best way was a Medicare-type rebate.
“Just sending them out free to everybody is going to cause a problem with supply as well,” he told Today.
“I think that really testing should be left in the retail side of thing, but rebates should definitely be introduced.”
Mr Hough, who said he was in talks with government, believed we would have answers very quickly.
The federal health department told news.com.au the government currently funds rapid antigen testing in aged care facilities and that national cabinet agreed last month to develop a nationally consistent framework for the use of rapid antigen testing. It said the work on that was progressing.
“Medicare does not fund clinical goods, it funds clinical services,” a spokeswoman said.
“For example, Medicare does not fund bandages or medicines, but it does fund the service provided by a doctor in changing a bandage or prescribing a medicine. This also applies to rapid antigen detection devices or screening tests.”
Originally published as Shortages of rapid antigen tests in Australia expected for weeks
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