‘It’s like The Hunger Games’: Shortage of RATs in NSW to extend for weeks

NSW’s shortage of rapid antigen tests is likely to last for weeks as pharmacists report being “at their wits’ end” trying to source adequate supplies.

The rush on tests comes after the government last week allowed people to confirm their COVID-19 infections through the at-home kits instead of PCR tests.

A sign in the window of a pharmacy at Circular Quay alerting customers that it has run out of stock of rapid antigen test kits.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Sydney residents desperate for the tests have paid up to $30 for individual kits that appear to have been separated from larger packs and sold in resealable sandwich bags.

Retailers are selling rapid antigen tests separated from boxes and placed in resealable plastic bags.

Pharmacy Guild of Australia NSW branch president David Heffernan said pharmacists did not have enough time to prepare for the move away from PCR testing to rapid antigen tests.

“It would have been good to have some consultation in early December … because then we could have prepared, orders of RAT tests could have come in, vaccines could have been sorted,” he said.

“The demand has just been through the roof, and it’s still through the roof. I’m nearly at my wits’ end.

“There are real workforce issues here now and the concern is that it’s not just RAT tests that are going to be in short supply, but it’s pharmacists as well.”

Mr Heffernan said pharmacies didn’t expect to be fully stocked with the kits until at least late January, with supply chain issues around items such as Panadol placing extra pressure on the retailers.

“It’s like The Hunger Games out there at the moment,” he said.

“It’s a lot of tension and the public are frustrated … and we’re just in the middle of it.”

He said many of the large orders spruiked by state and federal governments would not improve commercial supply directly as they were not going to retailers.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the state had “led the way” when it came to the supply of rapid antigen tests, having procured about 100 million.

“They’ll be used by the NSW government in a range of settings across the board to instil confidence as we move through this next stage,” he said.

Major supermarkets Coles and Woolworths are still reporting high demand for rapid tests and are limiting customer purchases.

A Woolworths spokesman said a large order of stock was on the way and availability was expected to improve over the coming week.

“We understand it’s frustrating when our customers can’t get the products they need and we’ll continue to do all we can to meet the growing demand,” he said.

Coles did not indicate when it expected more stock to be available.

Multiple Sydney residents who spoke to the Herald provided images of individual tests, purchased from service stations and pharmacies, which appear to have been separated from larger packs. They have been sold for between $20 and $30 and placed into zip lock bags, some with photocopied instructions.

A NSW Fair Trading spokesperson said the department had received 80 complaints from consumers relating to the sale of rapid antigen tests.

“Price gouging may have occurred if a test or kit is sold at more than 120 per cent of the purchase price,” the spokesperson said.

Professional Pharmacists Australia chief executive Jill McCabe said demand for the testing kits was hampering pharmacists’ ability to do their jobs.

“When stock does come into pharmacies, people are queuing around the block and then they are sold out within 20 minutes,” she said.

“The federal government has a much more central role to play here and should have been ordering them on mass way earlier, and should have been thinking about distribution in a very different way to how it’s played out.”

Federal Finance Minister Simon Birmingham defended the government’s failure to pre-order large amounts of rapid antigen tests, saying its reopening modelling had been based on the Delta variant.

“If we could have all predicted what the Omicron variant would look like, of course you would have prepared for it in different ways,” he said on ABC radio.

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