Fast testing can release Tasmania

Replace half-in, half-out lockdown with new hi-tech test, says Martyn Goddard

TASMANIA, right now, is perhaps one of the safest places on Earth to shelter from the pandemic. That may not last.

Our current security relies on already porous borders. Many people are already coming to Tasmania from the mainland – essential workers, truck drivers, construction workers, federal politicians – without being tested and without going into quarantine. Although entry from Victoria has now been more strictly controlled, the risk is obvious.

Victoria’s second wave has been going on undetected for weeks. This suggests two messages for Tasmania — that existing testing and control regimes are clearly inadequate to the task, and that it is entirely possible that the virus may already be here, brought in unknowingly from the mainland. If Victoria’s outbreak was undetected, how can we — with similar policies — be sure one has not started here? And how would we know if it had?

The standard public health playbook — temporary and unsustainable restrictions on movement, tracking the contacts of someone who presents with symptoms, putting individuals into isolation or quarantine — is increasingly inappropriate for such a highly infectious and widespread virus for which there is no vaccine and no cure. Just as new strategies once had to be found to counter the AIDS crisis, we need very different strategies to the conventional methods currently in use.

The current half-in, halfout restrictions we now have are too weak to stop an outbreak but are inflicting significant economic and social harm. They should go.

Fortunately, there have been recent and major advances in testing technology.

When testing for viruses, known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, began in the 1980s, it was a cumbersome process needing highly skilled scientific staff and a well equipped laboratory.

Results could take a week or more to come in.

But newly released devices can be taken into the field and are small enough to sit on a desk, do not need expert scientific operators can deliver reliable results in between 15 and 45 minutes, depending on the make.

They are already in use in Australia, with 85 in remote Aboriginal communities and at least one in every significant hospital in NSW.

These could be the future of COVID-19 screening in Tasmania.

They could readily be used at airports to screen incoming passengers from elsewhere in Australia and, potentially, from low-risk countries overseas.

The process could be turbocharged by a technique called pooled testing, in which people are tested in groups, with each person’s swab being cut into two pieces. Half of each is set aside in a tube with the person’s name on it. The other halves are pooled and processed as one. If no virus is detected, all can quickly be declared clear. If not, the remaining halves are processed and the person found to be positive can be put into isolation or quarantine.

In this way, a planeload of people could be tested within two or three hours, without everyone having to go into a fortnight’s quarantine.

As we open our borders to low-risk parts of Australia and the world, it is inevitable that some positive cases will arrive.

We badly need a second line of defence.