Mass shipment of testing kits arrives as government pleads for supplies

The first shipment among 100,000 new coronavirus testing kits were due to arrive in Australia on Tuesday night, alleviating a nationwide shortage that caused health authorities to issue strict guidelines on who was eligible for testing.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration fast-tracked onto the market the tests, which are able to turn around results in three hours and free up resources in Australia's overloaded pathology laboratories. Unlike the existing tests, the kits arrived from the United States ready to go and do not have to be assembled in the laboratory.

People line up outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital for coronavirus testing earlier this month.Credit: AAP

Roche Australia's managing director Allison Ross said the kits had been tested in the market for about a month and were rushed out to meet doctor and laboratory demand.

"It normally takes around 18 months to make a test and, in this situation, we managed to do it in six weeks," Ms Ross said. "The global team had their fingers to the bone."

Health Minister Greg Hunt.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Morrison government is asking companies to make a war-style shift in manufacturing, to produce much needed medical supplies.

With overseas supply chains unable to keep pace with demand, industry has been asked to step up the manufacturing of items such as surgical gowns, gloves, goggles and hand sanitisers.

The government has released a ‘request for information’ asking companies what they make, and what they can make. Department of Industry officials will then assess if companies are viable, and, if they are, government assistance will be provided.

It follows a move by luxury brand Louis Vuitton to start producing hand sanitiser in France. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is calling on engineering firms to shift production to building ventilators for the National Health Service.

Waiting times have spun out to seven days for non-urgent coronavirus tests and doctors with mild symptoms have been self-isolating out of caution, putting more pressure on hospitals.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt declined to answer at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon how many tests currently existed in Australia. "What we have is sufficient for current requirements," Mr Hunt said.

The World Health Organisation warned on Monday night that testing was the biggest priority in stopping the spread of the deadly disease.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries had not shown enough urgency in testing and contact tracing, which were the "backbone" of the coronavirus response.

"We have a simple message for those countries: test, test, test," he said.

Australians have been warned not to get tested unless they had symptoms and had been overseas or in contact with a confirmed case. There are concerns that people with mild or zero symptoms are spreading the disease unknowingly.

Roche will produce 400,000 of the new tests every week, but these will have to be shared with the international market. Ms Ross said the availability of the tests would not change the Australian guidelines on who could be tested.

The number of cases nationally has almost doubled since Saturday, with 448 cases reported at 2pm on Tuesday.

South Korea, which has managed to bring infections under control, has screened around one in every 200 citizens, after widely distributing the tests when its first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed. It has 633 testing sites nationwide and the ability to test 20,000 people per day.

Australia has conducted 80,000 tests, though this is higher than the number of people tested because some people have been tested more than once.

UNSW immunologist John Dwyer has called for random testing of the population to ascertain the extent of the penetration of the virus in the community.

UNSW adjunct professor Bill Bowtell, who designed Australia's response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, said the Australian government had missed the opportunity to follow South Korea's lead and screen a large portion of the population because it was now competing with international demand.

"All you had to do in January was 10 times the orders for test kits just in case," he said.

"It's not that people weren't telling them to. And now in the last couple of weeks people have gone from moderately interested to increasingly hysterical."

A Department of Health spokesman said Australian laboratories started work on an in-house test as soon as the genetic sequence became available on January 12.

"Over recent weeks, requests for COVID-19 testing have increased dramatically, as have demands on laboratory resources such as reagents and test kit supplies," the spokesman said. "There are sufficient stocks across public and private testing laboratories to meet short-term demands."

The government was working with laboratories to secure supplies and at the same time talking to medical practitioners about who should be tested. Some laboratories were also screening test request forms.

Meanwhile Victorian manufacturer Med-Con will increase production of face masks from 5 million to 15 million per year after intervention by the Morrison government.

Employees at the Shepparton-based company will work around the clock and take on an extra 25 staff.

Manager of operations Ray Stockwell said he expected production to increase "dramatically over the next three weeks or so".

"We’re going to go from one shift to three shifts and put out a lot of masks," Mr Stockwell said.

Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said about a dozen engineering specialists from the Australian Defence Force have been seconded to Med-Con to make masks and do other tasks until the company can recruit and train more staff.

Australian Medical Association WA president Andrew Miller said the next shortage might be the swabs used in the tests.

"At the moment we have just enough swabs and not enough testing," Mr Miller said. "Pretty soon we will have enough testing but not enough swabs."