Page 769 - Week 03 - Thursday, 2 April 2020
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rapidly, and things have not necessarily developed in the way people have expected in either direction, up or down.
What I have been emphasising, and what the Chief Health Officer and the Chief Minister have been emphasising to Canberrans, is that we need to act now to ensure that we are flattening the curve. We do not want to see the start of local community transmission and sustained community transmission in our community. Once we start seeing sustained community transmission, it is much harder to slow it down and shut it down than it is to slow the spread of transmission from the low level that we have at the moment, with what are largely returning travellers and close contacts.
MRS KIKKERT: Minister, does the government know how many people in the ACT have the COVID-19 virus but were not tested because they were ineligible? If the answer is yes, how does it know?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: As Mrs Kikkert, I am sure, would be aware, if she was reading the updates and watching our press conferences, the ACT has had almost 5,000 negative test results for COVID-19. To date, we have 87 cases of COVID-19 in the ACT. We have, of course, had one tragic death. I again send my sympathies to that woman’s family and friends. We have 11 people who have recovered. But that record of almost 5,000 tests and 87 positive results is about two per cent positive. That is incredibly low by global standards. So when we are hearing people internationally saying, “Test, test, test,” Australia is testing at the highest rates in the world.
When you have those very low positive numbers and you are picking up a lot of mild cases, there is a degree of confidence that you are picking up most of the cases. I will never stand here and say there is not a case of a positive COVID-19 patient out there that we do not know about. But if there were a lot of them, we would start to see them in hospital. We are testing everyone who is in hospital with an unexplained severe respiratory illness or unexplained fever, and none of those tests has so far come back positive without a known source of transmission; that is, not a local community transmission. We are also testing all health workers who are symptomatic and who seek to be tested. I encourage health workers who are symptomatic to get tested, because we want to know if there is local community transmission of COVID-19. We are not trying not to find out; and, as soon as we know, we will tell people.
MISS C BURCH: Minister, how many people have sought testing for COVID-19 but been refused because they were ineligible?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I will have to take the detail of the question on notice. I know that a number of people have sought testing and have not been found to meet the criteria. Again I need to emphasise that the criteria we have for testing are nationally consistent criteria, and they have also been broadened a couple of times. They have been broadened so that we can do that sentinel testing, so that we can test our healthcare workforce, and so that we can test those people in hospital. We test people in residential aged care, detention, and in other congregate living circumstances if they have symptoms as well, because we know that if there is a positive case of COVID-19 in those environments that is an environment where it can spread.
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