Opinion: Forcing travellers to get a gold-standard PCR test before flying interstate goes against expert health advice and has to stop | rachelclun
Forcing travellers to get a gold-standard PCR test before flying interstate goes against expert health advice and has to stop.
It was always going to be a tricky balance for states that had kept COVID-19 out to stomach reopening their borders and risk infections. Those reopenings have indeed seen case numbers rise in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania.But putting the onus of testing on public health systems elsewhere was never a fair system.In NSW and Victoria, a quarter of all PCR testing is being done for people travelling interstate.
Surely providing booster shots to the vulnerable, the elderly and our frontline workers is a better use of public healthcare workers’ time than performing COVID-19 tests for people who don’t have symptoms but just want a weekend in Noosa.It also goes against the advice of the country’s chief medical officers group, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee.
Current AHPPC advice says PCR tests should only be used to help rapidly detect cases of coronavirus and people without symptoms should only be tested in certain circumstances.
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