Early organising for second booster shots against COVID-19 have begun after Australia passed the milestone known as "full vaccination level" or 95 per cent first dose.
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But practical concerns continued to dominate in regional parts - such as being unable to find rapid antigen tests to comply with state government rules.
Australia's chief medical officer Paul Kelly was announcing "signs of hope" on Saturday that the outbreak in hard-hit jurisdictions like the ACT, NSW and Victoria had peaked.
"All predictions, and now the actual forecasting based on actual numbers of cases, particularly in NSW but also in Victoria and ACT, leads me to believe that we are close to the peak of this wave in terms of cases," Dr Kelly said.
How much comfort that brings households in regional areas is unknown. Some communities are reporting that without competition seen in the metropolitan areas, limited supplies of RAT kits were going for $20 per individual test - a necessary cost for many workers to now return to their jobs.
In Googong, on a tour of regional NSW, the state's Opposition Leader Chris Minns and Labor's Monaro byelection candidate Bryce Wilson were listening to health service workers and unions about the impact of Omicron on their regions.
"In many cases, they're too expensive or they're not available, or both," Mr Minns said.
"We are the only advanced economy in the world that has not distributed these tests for free, or at least put a price cap on them so that an individual can pay for it and it doesn't break the bank. A family of five could be shelling out $100 every time they want to test whether the family's got COVID-19."
State health officials recommended daily sequential tests for close contacts.
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While considerable pressure has been put on the federal government over its failure to plan for the volume of rapid antigen tests needed as restrictions eased under the national reopening plan, the state Labor leader said Premier Dominic Perrottet was similarly warned about the need for tests many months ago.
"This has been a major failing. It has had severe consequences and impact on the ability of pandemic planners and healthcare officials to determine where to allocate resources," Mr Minns said.
"There's no one is saying that the NSW government can stop COVID, but considering there's only a few levers that can be pulled by government, they must be done perfectly. They haven't been done by Dominic Perrottet."
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Harley Dennett
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
