A Cowes pharmacy had thousands of phone calls from customers wanting Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) in just one day, despite having no available RAT stock.

Greg Kossena at Priceline Pharmacy in Cowes said their last delivery of the DIY RAT tests was “a small quantity” on New Year’s Eve.

“I believe our RAT scenario is no different to that across the board, here on the island and in Melbourne,” Greg said.

“I clocked our phone call numbers for one of the days after the New Year at just over 7000 calls in the 10 hours we were open. About 90 per cent of these were queries about RATS, with many most likely not even from the island. We definitely did not have enough staff to answer those calls so more than 70 per cent of the calls went through to the answer machine.”

Greg said suppliers told the pharmacy before New Year’s Eve that all RAT stock had been secured by the government and “no further supplies would be made until the government stock had been fulfilled”.

“There is no guaranteed stock across Australia, only back orders can be placed with “tentative, non-guaranteed back in supply dates” on suppliers’ websites, some being mid-January, most early February."

He said the government advice was that anyone displaying symptoms – who was a close contact of a positive case – should be attending a testing site.

“The testing site will either perform a PCR test or if they have RAT stock, may supply a RAT on a case-by-case basis,” Greg said, adding RATs were for those not showing symptoms who were close contacts or those who needed it for issues such as employment.

He said they had also received a government notification that government concession card holders could obtain up to 10 RATs per month at no charge from January 24.

Bass Coast Health

Bass Coast Health CEO Jan Child said they continued to have scarce supply of RATs and were waiting on an order that was meant to arrive a month ago.

“We put in an order for 20,000 ages ago but – like the whole nation – it’s caught up in supply chain issues,” Ms Child said.

“We have some for the really critical areas, such as the disabled unable to leave home and staff, especially staff who are close contacts and been called back to work. We have prioritised RATs for them.”

She said once they received stock, a notice would go out to the community and the Wonthaggi tent would likely have two lines: one for PCR testing and one for RATs. “Who gets what is still being defined.”

Ms Child said her own daughter had Covid while her husband was showing symptoms, while she herself had isolated away from her family. “I told my husband what I tell others: assume if you have symptoms and you’re living with a positive patient, you have got it and so isolate.”

Covid tally

Ms Child said without question the daily Bass Coast tally of Covid-positive patients did not accurately reflect the total number.

“I stopped looking at the numbers ages ago. Some people just can’t get a test, some who test positive on a RAT are not reporting it. Then there are visitors in our community who aren’t counted in our numbers because their residential address is not here.”

She said the best advice to avoid infection was to wear a well-fitting surgical-grade mask, not a cloth mask, when indoors.