Covid test

WITH the protection of our closed borders under threat, we seem doomed to be overrun by Covid-19 very soon.

This morning my wife woke with a sore throat and a dry cough. Government advice is that she should be tested, but how? Should she drive out to Baillie-Henderson and queue? Our local doctor has no facilities to take a swab, and it seems that neither does the Sullivan Nicolaides local sample collection centre.

Perhaps she should wait to see if it passes, or if our local supermarket is declared as a contact site?

The present chances of contracting the virus in Toowoomba seem vanishingly small, especially since we are both double vaccinated. So she has sent apologies to a meeting that she was due to attend this morning, just in case, and will quarantine at home to see what transpires.

The PCR test is seen as the “gold standard”, but its use is limited because it is quite expensive. If you wait until symptoms are serious enough to warrant such a test, then have to wait another day for results, the risk of spreading is great.

There seems to be an Australian reluctance to use the rapid lateral test. It costs less than a hamburger and gives a result in a few minutes. Its advantages surely outweigh its inferior accuracy.

Surely the situation must change, before the border wall is broken down and Covid sweeps across the state.

A stock of sample tubes in the care of each GP costs little, but could persuade many more potential “spreaders” to be tested. Rapid tests could be used liberally to moderate the explosion of cases that we will soon see, when we join the southern states in their misery.

Surely we need every defence that we can get.

JOHN BILLINGSLEY, Toowoomba