COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Testing

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:01): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the minister—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Pangallo has the call, and he can start again, please.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question about COVID testing.

Leave granted.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Pangallo will be heard in silence. Order!

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: Recently, I asked the minister whether the government was considering allowing rapid antigen COVID test kits to be made available in South Australia. In the other states they are not only legal but demand has resulted in them being in short supply. Present legislation here is in place that prevents the public from being able to purchase these kits.

This week, the TGA published a list of 13 test kits approved for use that have minimal clinical sensitivity of at least 80 per cent and minimal clinical specificity of at least 90 per cent. People are advised to follow up positive results with a PCR test.

My question to the minister is: considering the more onerous impositions that are now going to be imposed on the business community and the health sector, as well as aged care, and as borders are set to open and COVID is expected to enter the state and claim lives, why isn't SA Health following the example of the other states and making these kits available to enable quicker responses to infections, and why must South Australians who now fear getting the disease or transmitting it unwittingly, be placed at a clinical and health disadvantage compared to other states?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:03): I am sorry if I gave the impression in my last answer that SA Health was totally prohibiting the use of rapid antigen testing, and that there wasn't a prospect of them being used by citizens in the future. My understanding is that rapid antigen testing is already being used for freight drivers, not without PCR testing but alongside PCR testing.

My understanding is that planning continues for use of rapid antigen testing in terms of business continuity for health facilities, and specifically this morning's South Australian Ambulance Service COVID-19 resilience plan in its section on clinical enablers indicated that it was intending to use rapid antigen testing.

So rapid antigen testing is already used under the supervision of SA Health. The honourable member, I appreciate, is wanting more than that. He is wanting it to be able to be accessed by individual citizens. My understanding from SA Health is that it is their expectation that rapid antigen tests would be appropriate but at a very different stage of the pandemic.

In a community where you have low or no community transmission my understanding is SA Health believes it is better to continue to use the higher reliability PCR tests but that as we do let COVID in we make every effort to slow the spread of the disease, but in due course, my understanding would be that there would be a point where SA Health would say that the COVID in the community is such that rapid antigen testing by private individuals would be appropriate. The bottom line is we are in a very different situation to Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT, and it is SA Health's view that we should maintain the current prohibition.

If I could clarify for the honourable member, this is not legislation. This is not legislation in the sense that it's a statute of this parliament or a regulation of the government. It is, as I understand it, a direction of the State Coordinator under the Emergency Management Act. If you like, it behaves like a regulation, but it's not what we would normally call legislation.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Pangallo, a supplementary.