Rapid antigen test subsidy would make sense

The decision by most jurisdictions to allow people to meet in large numbers for Christmas and New Year's Eve get togethers created hundreds of thousands of "superspreader" events. This placed millions of people - many of them elderly family members - at an unnecessary risk of catching the virus.

Compounding the problem has been a nationwide shortage of rapid antigen tests. This has led to reports of price gouging by some retailers.

Given that according to the federal government's own "COVID-19 test and isolate national protocols" people deemed to be a close contact are told to "take a RAT self-test as soon as possible" it is hard to grasp why the Prime Minister won't distribute them for free or at a subsidised rate.

With reports of people being charged up to $25 for a single test there would be many households, even in affluent Canberra, where the cost of RATs for every family member would be prohibitive.

To say, as Mr Morrison did on Monday, that "you can't just make everything free" seems nonsensical in the midst of a national emergency. It also rings hollow given the government's blithe indifference to the billions of JobKeeper dollars paid out to companies that didn't actually need them in 2020.

The reality is that if the virus continues to spread exponentially hospitals will ultimately be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers.

Health workers and their unions across many jurisdictions are already saying staff are at breaking point and that they cannot go on this way for much longer.

The festive season has already led to a surge in both case numbers and hospitalisations despite the fact the recent, and rather disingenuous, redefinition of who now qualifies as a "close contact" for a PCR test has led to a significant drop in the number of people in the testing queues.

In NSW, for example, testing numbers over the new year were down by almost 50 per cent to under 100,000 on their recent peaks. This means that the 20,794 new cases reported on Monday is no longer an accurate measurement of how pervasive COVID-19 is in the community. And, because of the porous border, this has a direct and immediate impact on Canberra.

On a per capita basis the 514 new cases recorded in the ACT on Tuesday was the equivalent of 10,012 cases in NSW.

Other jurisdictions, with the exception of geographically isolated Western Australia, are also seeing no significant decline in new case numbers despite falling PCR test numbers. Tasmania is tracking a similar trajectory to the ACT with 466 new cases on Monday. Queensland recorded 4249, Victoria 8577, and South Australia 2552.

While the one bright spot is that evidence is continuing to mount that Omicron is less serious than Delta this is offset by its sheer virulence. If 1 million people catch Omicron and only 1 per cent of them end up in hospital that is still 10,000 patients. Given almost 184,000 cases were recorded between December 19 and January 1 that is not out of the question.

In 2019-20 the Prime Minister famously said "I don't hold a hose mate". He has opened 2022 with "you just can't make everything free". These are all words which, if more is not done to rein in the spread of Omicron, will come back to haunt the government on polling day.

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