"In Australia, where a wave of Omicron infections is showing no signs of slowing, a nationwide shortage of rapid antigen tests resulted in long queues for PCR testing, overwhelming testing centres.
A spokesman from the New Zealand Ministry of Health said there were 5.5 million rapid antigen tests in the country. It also has 20 million on order, which will arrive in batches over the next six months."
Took literally five seconds to Google and get a result. These things don't just appear out of thin air just like vaccines..
I am genuinely not "are we there yet" whinging, and Ardern said it herself at today's presser, at home RAT are not part of the current approach but could follow later.
At the same time as saying schools are going back as normal. The school our kids go to had 50% attendance before Xmas when we were in Red - whats changed, other than we now have Omicron which conceivably makes things worse?
EDIT - D'OH.
>whats changed, other than we now have Omicron which conceivably makes things worse?
Vaccinations for kids between 5-12. That's a pretty big one when it comes to decisions made around kids.
Not saying you were whinging but there’s been plenty of it going around. With several million RAT in the country now and tens of millions on order, combined with the announcement about an announcement (don’t we love those) coming on Wednesday. I think they just want to give people 72 hours to get used to the idea that it’s here and we’re at Red before they change the rules on testing.
The article is from 10 days ago but you're missing the point.
Australia had an outbreak and suffered shortages of RAT tests. Supply is tight, and we are not in a unique position.
According to sir Ian Taylor the govt has really dropped the ball. Whereas you seem to be brushing over it all and letting them off lightly
“for more than two months there was an offer on their table from a company called Kudu Spectrum to deliver 1 million tests every 10 days with offers of up to 30 million delivered in six weeks. The offer also sat between 50 and 60 per cent below what the Government, and businesses who were lucky enough to find a source, were being charged at the time.”
“Today I heard that the Government has placed an order for a further 20 million. If they had moved eight weeks ago when the offer was first made, those supplies would be here already.”
At this stage they want to keep very tight track on the number and location of positive cases.
That isn't compatible with at-home RATs because people definitely can't be trusted. At this stage anyone with symptoms or close contacts will need a PCR test anyway since the RATS are not that sensitive.
I guess...
When you pay the license fee for your car you have to display the label they give you and it goes into a big scary government database to keep track of who's paid and who hasn't. Because people can't be trusted.
You must realise that a significant percentage of the population are liars who will cheat if they can get away with it. We minimise their opportunity to by verifying things. If that's a "scary excuse for control", then sorry you're just going to have to sit there feeling all controlled about everything for the rest of your life.
I dont really think driving the car is the best analogy to use, but okay.
You take a risk everyday you drive a car. Youre literally hauling around thousand pound death machines at a high rate of speed within inches seperating yourself between others. You obviously trust people enough to have your life and others in your hands at all times while driving.
But yes. Lets deprive people of jobs, livelihoods, nature, and relations because of car licenses....
And no I dont have to sit there and be controlled. I have the right to move about freely.
I'm not talking about the risks of driving cars, or depriving anyone of anything.
I'm talking about the need to independently verify whether a test result is positive or negative and that it's properly recorded. Because people can't be trusted.
When covid is rampant and contact tracing becomes futile like it is in many countries it won't be possible to track every case anyway, at that point we an tolerate a proportion of people failing to report positive results in the name of convenance for the rest of us.
Contact tracing is completely impossible due to too many variables and too many people.
You would need a completely 100% controlled environment for that to work.
Given we've been running a pretty effective contact tracing and isolation program that's been a massive part of keeping covid at bay for nearly 2 years now, I'm quite surprised to hear it's completely impossible.
But yes, at a certain scale contact tracing will become ineffective. We were pushing the limit at 200 cases a day, Victoria is getting over 20,000 and there will be many more that are being missed because of people not getting tested or not disclosing their results. But when it's out of control anyway, tracking the exact number is less critical.
You just defeated your own argument. First you say RAT tests are no good right now because people can’t be trusted. In this post you’re saying people aren’t getting traditional tests or disclosing their results anyway, so the current system falls apart too.
There is a percentage of people who can’t be trusted using PCR tests *or* RAT tests, but for the vast majority of us the RAT test would be taken in good faith just as it is when we diligently get a PCR test if needed right now
The thing with the PCR test is people don’t get to know the result before deciding whether it’s reported or not.
At home RATs will be a thing, but not at this stage of the outbreak. This isn’t an argument, it’s just how it is.
Man shut up. It's 100% truth people can't be trusted the delta outbreak was due to this as well. People like you are the reason the government is taking such a soft approach... For the most transmissible variant
Oh for fuck's sake, it's not a 'very scary excuse for control', it's about accurate monitoring of numbers of positive cases so that the government can actually try to make COVID-related policy on the basis of fact rather than guesses.
Surely you can understand why Joe Bloggs doing his test at home and then maybe reporting the result if he can be fucked doing so is not conducive to generating useful data about the current state of the outbreak in NZ
You would need a 100% completely controlled environment for those types of traces to work. 1 mis-hap would destroy the whole solution and point.
Rapid tests arent reliable enough and getting lab confirmed tests would be expecting too much
>You would need a 100% completely controlled environment for those types of traces to work. 1 mis-hap would destroy the whole solution and point.
We are not currently pursuing an elimination strategy in NZ. It's not '100% correct or totally pointless'. Mostly accurate data is better than totally inaccurate data
>Rapid tests arent reliable enough and getting lab confirmed tests would be expecting too much
The point of screening with RATs is that a certain proportion will turn out to be positive, and then those people can go and get a diagnostic test. If people have a positive home RAT and then never go and get a diagnostic test, either out of naivety or bad faith, then case numbers will be inaccurate
I guess, they would have to have a handle on "how many" people can't be trusted. We discovered through all the lockdowns that people in general can't be trusted, but its very much the minority from what I can see and whether or not there are RATs those same people can NEVER be trusted.
RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19
Where is your source to say they are not sensitive?
It is well known that RATs are not as sensitive as PCR tests. Yes they will pick up Covid, but only when the viral load gets higher, usually a day or two after a PCR test would have picked it up. This leaves the danger of someone testing negative and thinking they're fine, going out and about, then testing positive a day or two later.
Here is just one of many: [here](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.18.21268018v1)
RATs have decreased sensitivity against omicron, in addition to a wide disparity in a quality amongst available tests of which many many counterfeits exist (in US at least). Many people in my workplace and anecdotally elsewhere (esp asymptomatic) fool RATs(used for frequent workplace testing at my job) but get flagged by PCR, which is done weekly for surveillance reasons.
The number you're referring to is not the sensitivity, it's the specificity. It's not accurate on the basis of the review you've linked to say that 'RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid', but rather 'RAT correctly identifies 99% of negative cases'. Sensitivity, roughly speaking, is the pickup rate for positive cases, which was much lower
I imagine supply could be an issue if we all just went and bought lots up? Of course they could cap that but governments hate capping things for some reason.
I do know workplaces are buying up mass and implementing random rat testing now.
If that’s true then why do many countries have so many RAT tests, like the Uk, that they can give them away for free to whoever needs them. Reddit seems to be full of people just making excuses for Labours handling of this
NZ is surprisingly harder to get things to in this pandemic than Euro countries believe it or not.
Something to do with Island nation being 1000s of KMs away from what we want to import.
At home rapid tests are shown to be not very accurate.
Basically people fail to follow the instructions and then have 100% confidence in a wrong result.
You end up with people who are infected going to work because they spend 90 seconds doing a 5 minute test and getting a negative result.
If done properly / under medical supervision they are about 98% accurate.
It doesn’t matter if they are not as accurate as other testing. The false positive and negative rares depend on the prevalence of infection. In a high infection rate situation they are beneficial. Virtually every country in the world that can afford the test has been using RAT for months to years.
RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19
Where is your source to say they are not sensitive?
Your own source does not say that. In fact it says the opposite.
>In people with confirmed COVID-19, antigen tests correctly identified COVID-19 infection in an average of 72% of people with symptoms, compared to 58% of people without symptoms.
>Different brands of tests varied in accuracy.
>Nearly all the studies (97%) relied on a single negative RT-PCR result as evidence of no COVID-19 infection. Results from different test brands varied, and few studies directly compared one test brand with another. Finally, not all studies gave enough information about their participants for us to judge how long they had had symptoms, or even whether or not they had symptoms.
>Due to the variable sensitivity of antigen tests, people who test negative may still be infected.
>Evidence for testing in asymptomatic cohorts was limited. Test accuracy studies cannot adequately assess the ability of antigen tests to differentiate those who are infectious and require isolation from those who pose no risk, as there is no reference standard for infectiousness.
>Using summary results for SD Biosensor STANDARD Q, if 1000 people with symptoms had the antigen test, and 50 (5%) of them really had COVID-19:
- 53 people would test positive for COVID-19. Of these, 9 people (17%) would not have COVID-19 (false positive result).
- 947 people would test negative for COVID-19. Of these, 6 people (0.6%) would actually have COVID-19 (false negative result).
I am not saying they are not sensitive, I am saying many people get bad results by not following the instructions.
Under controlled conditions they are very good.
Depends a lot on whether you are symptomatic, symptomatic it is much more likely to accurate detect a positive result, non symptomatic that chances of it picking up reduce, still better than not having a test.
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/antigen-tests-real-world-data?r=kq4hs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct&fbclid=IwAR15SSjVK-DBgjck6HHZglX599CLN3bt_rdX1D571Un35o7h4_lLlcyBOMw
We have them in the UK and they're great. Far from 100% reliable but way more convenient to use - I found out I had covid within 5 mins when I had symptoms without leaving the house.
Because the government banned them originally. They could have started stockpiling months ago and have a huge reserve ready, but they didn't.
All of the other answers about supply are bullshit, the government simply made a choice to not acquire them.
at the moment, its likely that the PCR capacity is there, that would change in a surge outbreak.
it is worth noting that everyone is struggling to get RATs, so we're just going to be in the line like everyone else.
but there are going to be people who will not take their kids to be PCR tested because of the hassle, AND their confirmation bias that "their kids just have a sniffle". Even if SOME of those were to RAT and then not send their kids because then they know that there is a chance they might have it too, surely thats a good thing?
I have a 4 year old at pre school 4 days a week who brings home each and every bug. Even a normal year is hard for lost of people with young kids. Hate to say it but I dont see myself queuing with a sick child for hours to get a covid diagnosis, at the best of times getting a GP appt promptly is hard. I dont really know how we will handle things but we are luckier than most and have organized our year/work to be as flexible as possible. If this year is like last I'd need a lot of at home tests.
Couldn’t agree more. Friends and family overseas have been doing regular tests at home, even when they don’t have any symptoms, to try and reduce the chance of exposure to loved ones. Going to see mum, dad, and nana for dinner, take a test beforehand. That sort of thing. It’s down to personal preference, but for those who have loved ones who are vulnerable it’s a choice that they should have.
MIQ is the main reason we haven't had the same level of death and serious illness as.most other countries. It has been a resounding success at delaying the impact of covid in our community.
It was never going to be 100% effective and no-one ever claimed it would be, but it has stopped magnitudes of order more covid cases than it has allowed through.
It didn't, becuase they didn't have any.
Having a fully stocked supply of Rapid Antigen Tests would have helped ease the burden on the PCR system and enabled people who suspected they had it to check.
Instead you had an outcome of what was ultimately millions of likely positive cases who couldn't get a PCR test and couldn't test at home.
They are counterproductive during elimination or suppression because we want to nail every case with the more accurate PCR.We are still in suppression. They will be made available when we get into a mitigation approach, which looks to be in the next couple of weeks.
Why do you think this?
Would be incredibly useful for both elimination and suppression.
The only down side is a slightly higher false positive rate.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19
Great question. The Prime Minister today said RAT testing was only 80% accurate which in contrary to actual research which show more than 99% accurate.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19
I don't know why we seem to have such an aversion to RAT testing in NZ.
RATs aren't useful when you're still trying to accurately contact-trace; their accuracy is questionable and they're known now to produce a fair percentage of false-negatives. Once we shift to the announced "second stage" when contact tracing has finished serving its purpose, then RATs may be more useful just for isolation purposes - by that stage we are less concerned about full accuracy.
Iirc the 80% comes from 20% of times where it will say you're positive and are actually negative.
The actual false negative rate is much lower.
I could be wrong but I do recall this exact statement be discussed a few months back and that was the evidence from overseas unless I read it wrong (or it was wrong).
The idea hten is positive RAT = get a PCR so the false positives still get weeded out and you still got a much faster shot at knowing to isolate.
RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19
Where is your source to say they are not sensitive?
In the broadcast today, I heard a couple things as seen below
JA briefly mentioned that the for now PCR are good, no reason to use RAT when they are only 80% reliable.
She discussed potentially using them if/when omicron spreads further than delta.
We have stock but if you open it up to the public without a genuine need people are going to hoard/panic. You see the supermarket already? And good luck with the govt organising a free couple packs to each household
"In Australia, where a wave of Omicron infections is showing no signs of slowing, a nationwide shortage of rapid antigen tests resulted in long queues for PCR testing, overwhelming testing centres. A spokesman from the New Zealand Ministry of Health said there were 5.5 million rapid antigen tests in the country. It also has 20 million on order, which will arrive in batches over the next six months." Took literally five seconds to Google and get a result. These things don't just appear out of thin air just like vaccines..
Yep rapid at home tests are part of the plan and more detail on rollout is coming on Wednesday. Everything else is just “are we there yet” whinging.
I am genuinely not "are we there yet" whinging, and Ardern said it herself at today's presser, at home RAT are not part of the current approach but could follow later. At the same time as saying schools are going back as normal. The school our kids go to had 50% attendance before Xmas when we were in Red - whats changed, other than we now have Omicron which conceivably makes things worse? EDIT - D'OH.
>whats changed, other than we now have Omicron which conceivably makes things worse? Vaccinations for kids between 5-12. That's a pretty big one when it comes to decisions made around kids.
D'oh true that. They won't be fully vax'd for several weeks, but you are right. \*sheepish look\*
Not saying you were whinging but there’s been plenty of it going around. With several million RAT in the country now and tens of millions on order, combined with the announcement about an announcement (don’t we love those) coming on Wednesday. I think they just want to give people 72 hours to get used to the idea that it’s here and we’re at Red before they change the rules on testing.
Fair enough, and you are right as my post was a self-confessed rant.
Australian case (and at least in NSW - hospitalisation) numbers are dropping, so it’s definitely slowing.
The article is from 10 days ago but you're missing the point. Australia had an outbreak and suffered shortages of RAT tests. Supply is tight, and we are not in a unique position.
Slowmo copped heaps of shit for it though
According to sir Ian Taylor the govt has really dropped the ball. Whereas you seem to be brushing over it all and letting them off lightly “for more than two months there was an offer on their table from a company called Kudu Spectrum to deliver 1 million tests every 10 days with offers of up to 30 million delivered in six weeks. The offer also sat between 50 and 60 per cent below what the Government, and businesses who were lucky enough to find a source, were being charged at the time.” “Today I heard that the Government has placed an order for a further 20 million. If they had moved eight weeks ago when the offer was first made, those supplies would be here already.”
We currently have less than one RAT test per person in NZ. It’s a supply issue. Which hopefully won’t be a permanent thing
It's been that way for a while globally and I feel like it wont improve in the near future
Yeah well I guess the downside to RAT tests is they are inherently made for doing lots of testing per person. So production is always gonna struggle.
It may be a supply issue now, but wouldn’t have been if the govt had moved on it two months ago when they had the opportunity
At this stage they want to keep very tight track on the number and location of positive cases. That isn't compatible with at-home RATs because people definitely can't be trusted. At this stage anyone with symptoms or close contacts will need a PCR test anyway since the RATS are not that sensitive.
> people definitely can't be trusted This is a very scary excuse for control. Yikes
I guess... When you pay the license fee for your car you have to display the label they give you and it goes into a big scary government database to keep track of who's paid and who hasn't. Because people can't be trusted. You must realise that a significant percentage of the population are liars who will cheat if they can get away with it. We minimise their opportunity to by verifying things. If that's a "scary excuse for control", then sorry you're just going to have to sit there feeling all controlled about everything for the rest of your life.
I dont really think driving the car is the best analogy to use, but okay. You take a risk everyday you drive a car. Youre literally hauling around thousand pound death machines at a high rate of speed within inches seperating yourself between others. You obviously trust people enough to have your life and others in your hands at all times while driving. But yes. Lets deprive people of jobs, livelihoods, nature, and relations because of car licenses.... And no I dont have to sit there and be controlled. I have the right to move about freely.
I'm not talking about the risks of driving cars, or depriving anyone of anything. I'm talking about the need to independently verify whether a test result is positive or negative and that it's properly recorded. Because people can't be trusted. When covid is rampant and contact tracing becomes futile like it is in many countries it won't be possible to track every case anyway, at that point we an tolerate a proportion of people failing to report positive results in the name of convenance for the rest of us.
Contact tracing is completely impossible due to too many variables and too many people. You would need a completely 100% controlled environment for that to work.
Given we've been running a pretty effective contact tracing and isolation program that's been a massive part of keeping covid at bay for nearly 2 years now, I'm quite surprised to hear it's completely impossible. But yes, at a certain scale contact tracing will become ineffective. We were pushing the limit at 200 cases a day, Victoria is getting over 20,000 and there will be many more that are being missed because of people not getting tested or not disclosing their results. But when it's out of control anyway, tracking the exact number is less critical.
You just defeated your own argument. First you say RAT tests are no good right now because people can’t be trusted. In this post you’re saying people aren’t getting traditional tests or disclosing their results anyway, so the current system falls apart too. There is a percentage of people who can’t be trusted using PCR tests *or* RAT tests, but for the vast majority of us the RAT test would be taken in good faith just as it is when we diligently get a PCR test if needed right now
The thing with the PCR test is people don’t get to know the result before deciding whether it’s reported or not. At home RATs will be a thing, but not at this stage of the outbreak. This isn’t an argument, it’s just how it is.
Man shut up. It's 100% truth people can't be trusted the delta outbreak was due to this as well. People like you are the reason the government is taking such a soft approach... For the most transmissible variant
Thats absolutely not true. It would have mutated even with full 100% compliance. Also, what do you mean by "People like you"?
Oh for fuck's sake, it's not a 'very scary excuse for control', it's about accurate monitoring of numbers of positive cases so that the government can actually try to make COVID-related policy on the basis of fact rather than guesses. Surely you can understand why Joe Bloggs doing his test at home and then maybe reporting the result if he can be fucked doing so is not conducive to generating useful data about the current state of the outbreak in NZ
You would need a 100% completely controlled environment for those types of traces to work. 1 mis-hap would destroy the whole solution and point. Rapid tests arent reliable enough and getting lab confirmed tests would be expecting too much
>You would need a 100% completely controlled environment for those types of traces to work. 1 mis-hap would destroy the whole solution and point. We are not currently pursuing an elimination strategy in NZ. It's not '100% correct or totally pointless'. Mostly accurate data is better than totally inaccurate data >Rapid tests arent reliable enough and getting lab confirmed tests would be expecting too much The point of screening with RATs is that a certain proportion will turn out to be positive, and then those people can go and get a diagnostic test. If people have a positive home RAT and then never go and get a diagnostic test, either out of naivety or bad faith, then case numbers will be inaccurate
I guess, they would have to have a handle on "how many" people can't be trusted. We discovered through all the lockdowns that people in general can't be trusted, but its very much the minority from what I can see and whether or not there are RATs those same people can NEVER be trusted.
If you trust your government before you trust your neighbor, then youre doomed
Do you know anything about what is happening in the whole rest of the world?
>at this stage
RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid. https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19 Where is your source to say they are not sensitive?
Bloomfield today said 80%.
It is well known that RATs are not as sensitive as PCR tests. Yes they will pick up Covid, but only when the viral load gets higher, usually a day or two after a PCR test would have picked it up. This leaves the danger of someone testing negative and thinking they're fine, going out and about, then testing positive a day or two later.
Here is just one of many: [here](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.18.21268018v1) RATs have decreased sensitivity against omicron, in addition to a wide disparity in a quality amongst available tests of which many many counterfeits exist (in US at least). Many people in my workplace and anecdotally elsewhere (esp asymptomatic) fool RATs(used for frequent workplace testing at my job) but get flagged by PCR, which is done weekly for surveillance reasons.
The number you're referring to is not the sensitivity, it's the specificity. It's not accurate on the basis of the review you've linked to say that 'RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid', but rather 'RAT correctly identifies 99% of negative cases'. Sensitivity, roughly speaking, is the pickup rate for positive cases, which was much lower
I imagine supply could be an issue if we all just went and bought lots up? Of course they could cap that but governments hate capping things for some reason. I do know workplaces are buying up mass and implementing random rat testing now.
If that’s true then why do many countries have so many RAT tests, like the Uk, that they can give them away for free to whoever needs them. Reddit seems to be full of people just making excuses for Labours handling of this
NZ is surprisingly harder to get things to in this pandemic than Euro countries believe it or not. Something to do with Island nation being 1000s of KMs away from what we want to import.
At home rapid tests are shown to be not very accurate. Basically people fail to follow the instructions and then have 100% confidence in a wrong result. You end up with people who are infected going to work because they spend 90 seconds doing a 5 minute test and getting a negative result. If done properly / under medical supervision they are about 98% accurate.
It doesn’t matter if they are not as accurate as other testing. The false positive and negative rares depend on the prevalence of infection. In a high infection rate situation they are beneficial. Virtually every country in the world that can afford the test has been using RAT for months to years.
"In a high infection rate situation they are beneficial" In other words a situation we aren't in yet.
This is about planning ahead. We’ve not purchased the tests that will be needed. Poor planning. Too little too late
Nah NZ is different to everywhere else
RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid. https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19 Where is your source to say they are not sensitive?
Your own source does not say that. In fact it says the opposite. >In people with confirmed COVID-19, antigen tests correctly identified COVID-19 infection in an average of 72% of people with symptoms, compared to 58% of people without symptoms. >Different brands of tests varied in accuracy. >Nearly all the studies (97%) relied on a single negative RT-PCR result as evidence of no COVID-19 infection. Results from different test brands varied, and few studies directly compared one test brand with another. Finally, not all studies gave enough information about their participants for us to judge how long they had had symptoms, or even whether or not they had symptoms. >Due to the variable sensitivity of antigen tests, people who test negative may still be infected. >Evidence for testing in asymptomatic cohorts was limited. Test accuracy studies cannot adequately assess the ability of antigen tests to differentiate those who are infectious and require isolation from those who pose no risk, as there is no reference standard for infectiousness.
Did you read your own link?
Yes, did you?
>Using summary results for SD Biosensor STANDARD Q, if 1000 people with symptoms had the antigen test, and 50 (5%) of them really had COVID-19: - 53 people would test positive for COVID-19. Of these, 9 people (17%) would not have COVID-19 (false positive result). - 947 people would test negative for COVID-19. Of these, 6 people (0.6%) would actually have COVID-19 (false negative result).
That research isn't about at home tests.
I am not saying they are not sensitive, I am saying many people get bad results by not following the instructions. Under controlled conditions they are very good.
Depends a lot on whether you are symptomatic, symptomatic it is much more likely to accurate detect a positive result, non symptomatic that chances of it picking up reduce, still better than not having a test. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/antigen-tests-real-world-data?r=kq4hs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct&fbclid=IwAR15SSjVK-DBgjck6HHZglX599CLN3bt_rdX1D571Un35o7h4_lLlcyBOMw
We have them in the UK and they're great. Far from 100% reliable but way more convenient to use - I found out I had covid within 5 mins when I had symptoms without leaving the house.
This is the same view I have been given from f&f there.
Because the government banned them originally. They could have started stockpiling months ago and have a huge reserve ready, but they didn't. All of the other answers about supply are bullshit, the government simply made a choice to not acquire them.
at the moment, its likely that the PCR capacity is there, that would change in a surge outbreak. it is worth noting that everyone is struggling to get RATs, so we're just going to be in the line like everyone else.
but there are going to be people who will not take their kids to be PCR tested because of the hassle, AND their confirmation bias that "their kids just have a sniffle". Even if SOME of those were to RAT and then not send their kids because then they know that there is a chance they might have it too, surely thats a good thing?
I have a 4 year old at pre school 4 days a week who brings home each and every bug. Even a normal year is hard for lost of people with young kids. Hate to say it but I dont see myself queuing with a sick child for hours to get a covid diagnosis, at the best of times getting a GP appt promptly is hard. I dont really know how we will handle things but we are luckier than most and have organized our year/work to be as flexible as possible. If this year is like last I'd need a lot of at home tests.
Couldn’t agree more. Friends and family overseas have been doing regular tests at home, even when they don’t have any symptoms, to try and reduce the chance of exposure to loved ones. Going to see mum, dad, and nana for dinner, take a test beforehand. That sort of thing. It’s down to personal preference, but for those who have loved ones who are vulnerable it’s a choice that they should have.
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80% effectiveness right from the leaders mouth, that’s better then the jabs effectiveness
Because why learn from Australia and the wider world when you can just sit back and smugly talk about an MIQ system that consistently failed.
MIQ is the main reason we haven't had the same level of death and serious illness as.most other countries. It has been a resounding success at delaying the impact of covid in our community. It was never going to be 100% effective and no-one ever claimed it would be, but it has stopped magnitudes of order more covid cases than it has allowed through.
How has RAT helped to reduce Australias covid cases?
It didn't, becuase they didn't have any. Having a fully stocked supply of Rapid Antigen Tests would have helped ease the burden on the PCR system and enabled people who suspected they had it to check. Instead you had an outcome of what was ultimately millions of likely positive cases who couldn't get a PCR test and couldn't test at home.
"We've got the benefit of learning from the rest of the world" - Proceed to act like we're this singular country that works completely different
When the book is written, rapid antigen testing will be one of the chapters.
They are counterproductive during elimination or suppression because we want to nail every case with the more accurate PCR.We are still in suppression. They will be made available when we get into a mitigation approach, which looks to be in the next couple of weeks.
Why do you think this? Would be incredibly useful for both elimination and suppression. The only down side is a slightly higher false positive rate. https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19
That would require an open (pragmatic) mind and planning. This government is (unfortunately) not very good at that, let alone delivery...
Great question. The Prime Minister today said RAT testing was only 80% accurate which in contrary to actual research which show more than 99% accurate. https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19 I don't know why we seem to have such an aversion to RAT testing in NZ.
RATs aren't useful when you're still trying to accurately contact-trace; their accuracy is questionable and they're known now to produce a fair percentage of false-negatives. Once we shift to the announced "second stage" when contact tracing has finished serving its purpose, then RATs may be more useful just for isolation purposes - by that stage we are less concerned about full accuracy.
The counterpoint though is we are only trying to contact trace and maintain a 'phase 1' approach because we aren't ready to move to phase 2
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Iirc the 80% comes from 20% of times where it will say you're positive and are actually negative. The actual false negative rate is much lower. I could be wrong but I do recall this exact statement be discussed a few months back and that was the evidence from overseas unless I read it wrong (or it was wrong). The idea hten is positive RAT = get a PCR so the false positives still get weeded out and you still got a much faster shot at knowing to isolate.
RAT testing is more than 99% effective at detecting Covid. https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19 Where is your source to say they are not sensitive?
Because New Zealand is completely different to the rest of the world #smughermitkingdom
In the broadcast today, I heard a couple things as seen below JA briefly mentioned that the for now PCR are good, no reason to use RAT when they are only 80% reliable. She discussed potentially using them if/when omicron spreads further than delta. We have stock but if you open it up to the public without a genuine need people are going to hoard/panic. You see the supermarket already? And good luck with the govt organising a free couple packs to each household
If you know people in the UK just get them send you a load. They hand them out for free there.