THE national shortage of rapid antigen tests has been mirrored in Ararat with our local pharmacies all out of stock.<\/p>\n
Pharmacists are hoping the availability of COVID-19 rapid antigen tests will increase in coming weeks after disruption of supply over Christmas meant shelves were stripped of the sought-after product.<\/p>\n
The Ararat Advocate contacted pharmacists this week to find no tests were available anywhere in Ararat Rural City.<\/p>\n
Ararat\u2019s Priceline Pharmacy told us they were out of stock and were uncertain when new test kits would arrive.<\/p>\n
In Willaura, Pharmacist Somnath Sakthi from Trident Pharmacy said he was unsure when the next shipment of tests will arrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have access to three major pharmacy wholesalers in the country and all three have a backorder with no definite date.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the wholesalers are putting out the line two to four weeks from today, but no certain date,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Blooms the Chemist Pharmacist Jason Hosemans said some kits arrived on Tuesday morning but sold quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe go an order in this morning and they were gone within about ten minutes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it will (improve) soon, they say there\u2019s plenty in the country and it\u2019s all sitting on the wharves, it\u2019s a question of getting them out, it\u2019s a distribution issue at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had another big order coming in from New South Wales this week but the government has gone and bought them,\u201d Mr Hosemans said.<\/p>\n
A prominent health expert said shortages of rapid antigen tests had been due to \u201cextraordinarily bad management\u201d by federal and state governments.<\/p>\n
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia\u2019s Victorian president, Anthony Tassone, said he expected the situation to improve within the next few weeks. He said pharmacies were receiving a deluge of calls from the public, and recommended people check a business\u2019s social media page before picking up the phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is expected to be an improved supply situation over the next couple of weeks but there are still going to be outages and shortages,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The nation-wide shortages follow a surge in Omicron cases and changes to testing rules agreed to by national cabinet last Thursday, which mean anyone who is a close contact of a person with COVID-19 must use multiple rapid antigen tests even if they don\u2019t have symptoms.<\/p>\n
Rapid tests have also been in high demand by people travelling interstate, with Victorians required to return a negative rapid test before they are allowed into Queensland.<\/p>\n
Stephen Duckett, director of the Grattan Institute\u2019s health program and a former secretary of the federal Department of Health, said the shortage in rapid antigen tests should never have happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just extraordinarily bad management. The demand for tests is most likely to be when we are most likely to catch up with friends and family, which is Christmas and New Year\u2019s \u2014 it was entirely predictable. We don\u2019t say we will have plenty of Christmas trees available two weeks after Christmas; you want them available before,\u201d he told the ABC.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned rapid antigen tests wouldn\u2019t be subsidised for everyone as coronavirus cases continue to rise.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE national shortage of rapid antigen tests has been mirrored in Ararat with our local pharmacies all out of stock. Pharmacists are hoping the availability of COVID-19 rapid antigen tests will increase in coming weeks after disruption of supply over Christmas meant shelves were stripped of the sought-after product. The Ararat Advocate contacted pharmacists this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/IMG_4044-2.jpg?fit=1280%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-92","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}