Free at home rapid antigen tests will be available to all children aged three to five attending early childhood education services.

The state government said more than 1.6 million rapid antigen tests will be delivered to early childhood settings in the coming weeks for families to conduct voluntary twice weekly testing. Sessional kindergartens will receive their deliveries over the next two weeks, followed by other early childhood services like long day care, family day care and occasional care.

As with school settings, the program will be voluntary, but highly recommended.

Testing will not be a requirement to attend early childhood settings, but families will be provided with medical guidance on how to easily administer the nasal tests to young children and get a result within 15 to 30 minutes.

The government has also provided funding to improve ventilation and grants to support kindergarten services implement CovidSafe measures in their centres, to keep children and staff safer in the classroom.