BREAKING: The Prime Minister has said National Cabinet will adopt a new nationally-consistent definition of ‘close contact’. MORE: 9News
Mr Morrison said National Cabinet had "agreed a very practical way forward to dealing with the realities of Omicron"."Omicron requires us to undertake a change of how we are managing the pandemic, and we need to reset how we think about the pandemic, and how we manage ourselves and the things we need to do as governments," he said.Mr Morrison said the national plans had taken into account that some states and territories had low cases and others had large outbreaks.
Mr Morrison said there was no need for anyone who did not fulfil the close contact definition to line up for PCR tests.The isolation period for confirmed cases has also changed to only seven days. "There are even more effective ways we can keep more people at work to support the health system," he said.
"So, if you turn up at those testing centres for all of the reasons I have set out, then you will either get a rapid antigen test or a PCR test," he said"This should significantly, we hope, over the next few weeks, greatly reduce the volume people who are having these PCR tests, which means we will be able to increase the turnaround time of these tests, getting results back to those who need to take them," Mr Morrison said.