Sydney / Melbourne: Australia will try to make urgent changes to the testing rules of Covid-19 to reduce pressure on the test location because infections soaring and the most populous countries in the country reported doubling in everyday cases.
Scott Morrison’s Prime Minister said on Wednesday Australia needed “equipment change” to manage burdened laboratories and make people out of isolation.
He called a national cabinet snap meeting on Thursday.
“We cannot have everyone who just brought out of circulation because they happened to be in a certain place at a certain time,” Morrison said during media direction.
Morrison’s plan will prioritize cases of urgent clinical, in an effort to cut a long line at the test location and wait for the lab results, which can now take three to four days.
The proposed rules will rely more on a quick antigen test, redefining close contact from confirmed cases to those who live in the same household, and only require PCR tests for symptoms.
Close contact must be isolation for seven days.
More and more countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have shorten the suggested isolation time for asymptomatic cases.
The proposed new test requirements arise when Queensland promised to calm the rules for travelers between countries with domestic arrivals only need a negative antigen test to get entered from January 1 than PCR tests than.
Morrison said A $ 375 million ($ 271 million) would be used to buy millions of additional fast antigen test kits.
Queensland called “Tourism Test” is under severe criticism from New South Wales after vacation tourists packed the testing hub, causing delays in the results of several days.
‘His madness’ even with a soaring infection, several test centers in Sydney are closed after public holidays and those who open have a long-running queue and drive-in.
“It’s crazy,” Hayden Anderson was 44 years old, who fought against liver cancer, told Reuters.
“Why are all closed test centers?” Anderson had a PCR test after a friend he met before Christmas was tested positive.
When he went for a follow-up test, the site was closed.
After seeing a long line in other testing hubs, he settled for a quick antigen test at home, but with a case that the soared he was worried he might struggle to get a PCR test, as required, ahead of the appointment of the next chemotherapy on January 11.
“It’s like walking in Teightrope now,” he said.
Australia is in the grip of the extremely contagious Omicron variant outbreak, with the new daily daily infection of the country jumped to almost 18.300, exceeded the previous high pandemic of around 11,300 hits on Tuesday.
Cases in most countries rose to a one-day record with New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia and home for Sydney, reported double in infection at 11,201.
Regardless of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, Morrison has so far put aside the locker, urging people to focus on the number of patients who are hospitalized.
While hospitalization crawled, they were still from the peak of delta waves.
Apart from Omicron and Delta waves, the Australian Covid-19 figure is still among the lowest in the world with around 341,500 cases and 2,210 deaths, thanks to strict social distance rules and harsh border restrictions.
But most of the states now begin to live with viruses after higher levels of inoculation.
($ 1 = 1.3841 Australian Dollars)