Roche team of just 24 men and women pump out 250,000 RAT and PCR tests a day across Australia
This is the Aussie team of just 24 men and women who are working day and night to deliver 250,000 Covid tests a day. SEE THE VIDEO.
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Exclusive: Meet Australia’s new Covid-19 frontline: not a medical lab or hospital emergency ward, but a production line of staff pumping out desperately-needed rapid antigen tests.
The small team are working day and night in a Sydney warehouse to deliver millions of tests across the country.
The tests are being sent from South Korea to a restricted-zone warehouse, isolated from the outside world, where 24 men and women are processing, labelling and sending out more than 10,000 rapid antigen and PCR tests every hour – totalling more than 250,000 tests a day.
Last year they pushed out 35 million tests and next year they are aiming at supplying another 30 million — and that is on top of Roche’s usual core business sending out medical tests for things like blood, cholesterol and cancer.
And each one of the team knows just how important it is for them to stay well and Covid-19 free.
“They are taking enormous precautions to keep the warehouse safe and Covid free,” said Roche managing director Allison Rossiter.
“Just one case could shut down the whole operation,” she said.
The tests arrive from South Korea and have to be given a TGA approved sticker on them as well as a QR code before being shipped out, mainly to chemists and health departments.
But before that operation fires up, each team member must themselves take a rapid antigen test every time they start a shift, and between each shift the warehouse undergoes a deep clean.
Supply chain manager, Tina Kellar, who oversees the warehouse operations, said many of the workers had not had dinner with their families for more than a year.
“And some of them haven’t seen their families for breakfast since last year,” she said.
“But they are very proud to be able to do something to help the community.”
Roche Diagnostics Australia is one of 13 suppliers of the 15 kits approved by the TGA for use in Australia.
The call for more use of the Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was going through a “gear change” moving away from reliance on PCR tests in favour of rapid antigen tests.
Professor Catherine Bennett, the Chair in Epidemiology in the Faculty of Health at Deakin University, said an increased use of rapid tests keeps the PCR tests for people who need it.
But Professor Bennett said we need to be careful they are used properly.
“They are clever things, but if you don’t collect the sample correctly their value drops away,” she said.
“We don’t want people using them incorrectly and doing the things they normally would thinking they are virus free.”
Professor Bennett said it was about getting the balance right and in some cases the rapid tests were good enough.
“The PCR tests are for the really sick – the last ones you want to have a delay and the sooner they get treatment the better.”
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