COVID-19 test result delays, but shorter waiting times for actual testing

COVID-19 testing queues should be shorter than they were over the festive season. (ABC South East NSW: Alex Hargraves)

South East health authorities say the long waiting lines experienced over the Christmas and New Year holidays will ease, as testing clinics return to regular opening hours.

However, pathology experts are warning delays over test results are set to continue due to the rising number of Omicron infections that are increasing testing workloads.

Liz Mullins, the executive director of medical services at Southern NSW Local Health District, said the demand on testing clinics should ease in the coming days.

"Now the public holidays have gone, there will be normal testing clinics like before," Dr Mullins said.

"Many of the problems from the testing clinics came from people needing a negative test to travel somewhere or to return to work.

"Most of that has now disappeared, so the stress on our testing clinics will be much less."

Dr Liz Mullins from the Southern NSW Local Health District says the demand on testing clinics should ease in the coming days. (Supplied)

However, with more Omicron cases in the South East, Dr Mullins warned people to wear masks, use QR codes, and socially distance.

Test result delays

Greg Granger, the director of operations at Histopath Diagnostics that runs clinics in the South East including at Cooma, said before Omicron tests could be processed quickly.

"Ordinarily we'll have an instrument with 100 reaction vessels on it. We can pool five into each one and do 500 patients within about four hours," he said.

Greg Granger, from Histopath Diagnostics, says the increase in positive cases is making processing more complex. (Supplied: Greg Granger)

However, he said the increase in positive results had made it difficult to process tests quickly.

"When you've got 50 out of the 100 detecting a positive case, that's 250 samples that need to be re-run individually," Mr Granger said.

"Keeping in mind the instrument has 100 reaction vessels on it, it needs to run three more times to find out which patients are positive.

"That's delaying the next 1,500 samples from being tested, so you can see how quickly a lab can fall behind.

The rise in positive cases linked to the Omicron variant is leading to delays for those awaiting test results. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)

Finding solutions

Mr Granger said coming up with sampling solutions had meant enormous investment in a short amount of time.

"We've had to invest millions in the last couple of weeks and months to rebuild. We just need greater instrument capacity," he said.

"There's no shortcut here; you can't just plug an instrument in and go for it. These changes in methodology take a bit of time."

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