Do you need a test? You may not need to join that queue

DO you really need a COVID test? Or are things changing so much, so fast, that you might not need one?

After more than 18 months of being told to get tested, get tested and get tested, the community has heeded the call so well that now many are getting tests they don’t need, according to the Sunraysia Community Health Service.

Demand for tests is currently high and, after there were long queues at city pathology clinic Barratt & Smith on Sunday and a few complaints that more testing facilities should have been available, health service chief executive Simone Heald said on Monday that testing systems were changing as vaccination rates rose and the circumstances of the pandemic changed.

“Some of the demand is created unnecessarily by the community. I don’t say that negatively because it’s great that the community gets tested, but sometimes not everyone needs to be tested,” she said.

“Some of the demand with Barratt & Smith over the weekend was people, I think, responding to emails from schools (where positive cases had been identified) and then feeling like they needed to be tested (but) people don’t necessarily need to be tested on that day, or all at the same time.”

Ms Heald said the Victorian government no longer posted all exposure sites “because they’re saying we actually know who we need to test and we just need to get them tested first”.

“We’re constantly changing our messaging and how we’re doing things as required,” she said.

“We don’t want to discourage people from testing, but we feel … the plans we’ve got in place are adequate, and if not we’ve got back-up plans.”

Ms Heald said those plans included regular meetings between health and community authorities “and we move our resources according to the needs to the community”.

“Instead of providing more testing (when demand surges), we just give staff to Barratt & Smith when they start to get busy.”

Sites such as the Old Aerodrome Ovals on Eleventh Street remained available as a back-up should large numbers of people be involved.

So, do you really need that test? Here’s the answer from the health service: “If you have any symptoms of COVID-19, or you do not have symptoms but are a close contact of someone known to have tested positive to COVID-19, please come forward for testing. You will also be required to test if you have been notified by the Department of Health and Human Services as having attended an exposure site”.