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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-11-17 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus Testing

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:08): My question is to the Premier. Is there any provision in testing clinics to triage high-risk people who need priority testing, such as close contacts or people with pronounced symptoms?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:08): Yes, absolutely. As I was saying, yesterday there were in excess of 5,300 people who had their sample or had a test undertaken in South Australia, but it's very much a prioritised regime in terms of the processing of those specimens. Some of those specimens were taken in the home so that we don't have people who are at a very high risk and likelihood because they have been very close contacts of people who are already infectious commingling with other people who maybe have just developed a respiratory symptom. We have been very clear on that.

Obviously, those we have put into isolation who are close contacts of somebody who has already been infected are the priority cases, and their tests are processed in a very rapid way. Some people have extrapolated. We announced this morning that, with the tests that had already been processed, there was only one new infection overnight, so many people were saying, 'Well, that's great. Maybe the entire problem is over.' Well, that's not the case.

We have put very many hundreds of people into isolation at the moment. We all know that the incubation period for this disease can be up to 14 days, so we still do have an anxious wait to see what the true situation is in South Australia, but there is more and more data coming in all the time, and we look forward to the update from SA Health at 3.15 this afternoon.

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