PM warns rapid tests won’t be free for all as experts slam delays

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has warned rapid antigen tests won’t be subsidised for everyone as coronavirus cases continue to rise and the country’s leaders work through plans to make free screening tests available in vulnerable communities.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese labelled the delay a public policy failure while public health experts said it was “astounding” a plan was not already in place this far into the pandemic.

A sign on Chemist Warehouse Double Bay, Sydney, informs customers that it has no rapid antigen tests left. Credit: Jessica Hromas

Supplies of rapid antigen tests have been limited in areas where COVID-19 case numbers are high as PCR testing queues and waiting times for results blow out, and there are reports some people are being charged well above $10 or $15 a test.

The nation’s Pharmacy Guild has opposed completely free access to rapid antigen tests while social services groups and unions have been pressuring the government to provide them at no charge to low-income families, and employer groups want them subsidised for workers.

Under the scheme agreed by national cabinet last week, the federal government will split the cost of rapid antigen tests provided through testing facilities in certain circumstances, including for close contacts and symptomatic people. However, earlier state plans to hand out free tests to the broader community were scrapped in the deal.

“We’ve invested hundreds of billions of dollars getting Australia through this crisis. But we’re now in a stage of the pandemic where you can’t just make everything free because, when someone tells you they want to make something free, someone’s always going to pay for it and it’s going to be you,” Mr Morrison said on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program.

Mr Albanese said the Prime Minister had failed to learn lessons from earlier in the pandemic.

“With months and months to prepare for a pandemic that has been going for two years, it is unbelievable that the government has told people to not go and get tested, but to test themselves with a rapid antigen test that isn’t available and that isn’t affordable,” he said on Monday.

“This is a public policy failure the likes of which we haven’t seen in this country before. It’s on Scott Morrison’s watch.”

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said it was “common sense” to limit supplies of free rapid antigen tests. State and federal governments had bought millions of test kits and there was capacity for individuals or businesses to buy tests through the private market, he said.

“If there were no constraints on that, then people would go down and take crates and boxes away,” he said.

National cabinet agreed in November to work on an Australian guideline for the use of rapid antigen tests, including in vulnerable populations such as Indigenous communities and in schools.

Mr Hunt said that plan was still being worked out and would be discussed at national cabinet again on Wednesday.

Epidemiologist and public health medicine specialist Professor Tony Blakely said Australia needed certainty as soon as possible.

“I find it astounding that we didn’t have the plans ready to go for all of this,” he said. “We’ve been talking about the need for mass rapid antigen testing ... for six months or more, with huge consensus from everybody that this is going to be critical to stopping lockdowns in the next phase of the pandemic.”

The Grattan Institute’s director of health and aged care, Dr Stephen Duckett, said the federal government had been too slow to approve and order rapid antigen tests and was yet to adequately think about how they fit into public health testing.

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said he hoped the Commonwealth would provide the state with half of all rapid antigen tests that the federal government would supply free.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she would ask for clarity at Wednesday’s meeting about who could access the subsidised tests, saying she thought national cabinet had agreed to support people on healthcare cards and pensioners.

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