Coronavirus: rush for tests leads to long footpath queues

Long queues formed outside public hospital virus testing facilities as anxiety over growing infection rates caused a spike in demand.

People queue outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital waiting to be tested for the coronavirus. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Long queues formed outside public hospital coronavirus testing facilities on Tuesday as anxiety over growing infection rates caused a spike in demand for tests, despite federal government attempts to limit them to high risk cases.

At least 50 people queued along the footpath outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital on Tuesday afternoon and Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital also saw about 250 patients concerned they had been infected by the virus with a long queue forming before the doors opened at 8am.

With the number of people infected with the virus passing 100, Health Minister Greg Hunt said more than 20,000 had called the Commonwealth coronavirus hotline and more staff had been added to reduce waiting times.

Drive-through testing

Meanwhile, in South Australia, a mothballed Adelaide hospital was literally driving one of the smartest innovations in the fraught world of coronavirus testing — a drive-through service where people are swabbed for the virus from the comfort of their car.

In a first for an Australian hospital, the five-minute drive-through coronavirus service was launched at the old Repatriation Hospital in Adelaide on Tuesday

CMO concedes testing ‘confusion’

The surge in people seeking tests came as the Australian Government’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said only a limited number of people needed to seek tests.

He conceded that there had been confusion over where people should go for testing and in what circumstances they should be tested.

“There have been people requesting COVID-19 tests who don’t currently warrant the testing,” Professor Murphy said.

“Our focus at the moment is testing people who are returned travellers who have acute respiratory symtoms: cough, sore throat and the like.

“And contacts of confirmed cases.

“But at the moment, we are not recommending that general members of the community with acute respiratory symptoms, colds, flu … be tested. I think that's a really important statement.”

Melbourne queues

Among the people queuing outside Royal Melbourne Hospital’s emergency department was Danai Harawa who returned from Indonesia a fortnight ago. She said she’d since felt tired.

“My doctor said it was just a common cold and that everyone is overreacting but I haven't recovered,” she said. “It's better to be safe than sorry.”

Harawa said she’d been bombarded by emails from her work about coronavirus and what precautions to take, as well as a preference for employees to get tested and cleared rather than working while sick.

Perched on her walker, Joanne Lawson (pictured) said she was feeling “pretty overwhelmed”. While Mrs Lawson had not recently travelled overseas, she had been feeling unwell with a sore throat, headache, dizziness and nausea for some weeks. Given her pre-existing kidney condition, her doctor suggested she get tested earlier that day. “With everything that's going on he just wanted me to be sure," she said.

One man, aged 33 who did not want to be identified, said he’d had contact with a person who shared an office with someone who had contracted the virus: “I'm not sick but I'm mainly here to protect my mother, who’s unwell with something else. I don’t want to pass anything to her”.

Queensland warning

In Queensland, hospitals are preparing for a rapid increase in the number of people presenting to be tested for coronavirus.

An email distributed by the Mater Hospital in South Brisbane said: “We may notice an increase in presentations from the public seeking to be tested for COVID-19 after it was announced by the Federal Minister for Health that any Australians with flu-like symptoms be encouraged to be tested for COVID-19”.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has also urged people who have the virus to take seriously the need to self-isolate for 14 days, warning that police will be conducting random compliance checks.

“It is very important that you don’t go to the shop and buy a bottle of milk and come home,” she said.

“This self isolation is very important.”

Quick tests, for $350

While long queues emerged at some public hospitals, the The Epworth private hospital in Melbourne confirmed that for its standard $350 emergency department fee suspected victims could be tested if they were deemed by doctors to be at risk. Those tests were being conducted within an hour, with the results taking 48 hours.

Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said that additional funding provided to Victoria’s major testing laboratory had enabled it to increase its capacity from 500 to 1000 tests per day.

He said that testing was being scaled up.

Initially it focused on recent travellers, but now patients admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia would also be tested to help track the spread of the illness.

Victoria’s Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said the addition of screening clinics at Sunshine and Melbourne’s north took the number of clinics to seven. She said retired paramedics, doctors and nurses could be called upon to help out as the crisis progressed.

“We are really living in unprecedented times,” she said. “This will test our health system and screening clinics.”