Poor access to testing and long delays in receiving results are compounding the challenges faced by regional and rural communities amid the Omicron wave of Covid-19, health professionals and local representatives say.
Danica Leys, the chief executive of the Country Women’s Association of New South Wales, said while there were shortages of rapid antigen tests in metropolitan areas, they were not available at all in regional areas, in her experience.
To get a test where she lives, Leys would have to drive an hour to Coonabarabran for a PCR test at a clinic which requires an advance booking and only operates one hour a day.
A doctor in regional NSW, who asked not to be named, said the state’s testing system was overwhelmed and the officially reported infection figures could not be trusted.
“I run a testing clinic in NSW and am still getting positive results from 4 January back from the lab. [We] can’t trust the NSW figures one jot.
“There are no rapid antigen tests available at any pharmacies or local supermarkets. The numbers are misleading and unreliable. Covid is rampant in this area.”
Peta Rutherford, the chief executive of the Rural Doctors’ Association of Australia, said regional and rural healthcare across most of the country was “under significant pressure”.
She said cases were “fairly widespread” but even where there were not many cases, healthcare systems were “certainly feeling the strain of increased testing, whether that’s for people who are travelling, have been a close contact or workforce requirements for health or aged care”.
Rutherford said rural towns did not have the mass testing clinics or the supplies of rapid antigen tests that cities have.
The Department of Health has announced that close contacts deemed ineligible for a PCR test can be offered free rapid antigen tests through state testing clinics but Rutherford said the distribution of rapid tests in rural towns without a nearby state testing facility remained unresolved.
Rutherford said as case numbers rose local healthcare professionals had to take on combined responsibilities of testing, vaccination and caring for Covid-19 patients.
“The reality is the same workforce works across the hospital and the general practice environment in most of these towns,” she said. “When there’s pressure on one, that creates pressure on the other.”
As Monday’s milestone of childhood vaccination eligibility coincided with eligibility for booster shots she said there was “a genuine capacity issue”.
Roy Butler, the MP for Barwon which covers a vast stretch of NSW from Lightning Ridge to Broken Hill, said all of the 27 health facilities in his electorate were experiencing staffing problems with Warren, Bourke and Broken Hill “at the top of the list at the moment in terms of staffing challenges”.
Butler said the pandemic had exposed the weaknesses and flaws in the regional health system, as hospitals including Bourke and Warren were under their critical staffing level before the pandemic.
“It hit us at a time when our health services were already in deficit, already compromised.”
With healthcare professionals having to isolate, some staff in western NSW have had to work double shifts of up to 18 hours.
“The real worry is not only the issue around care and being able to care for people in our hospitals and the resources that takes, the other problem is that we’re going to end up doing damage to our staff and damage our healthcare workers at a time we can’t afford to damage our healthcare workers,” Butler said.
He highlighted that it was difficult to attract and retain nurses and healthcare staff to work in rural Australian communities without the added pressures of Covid-19.
“You can’t nibble around the edges to fix this … It needs a real think of how we attract, engage and retain health staff in the west. It needs massive systemic structural change.”
Butler said the problem was especially pressing for communities in western NSW where there was an overrepresentation of people with co-morbidities and respiratory issues, which makes them especially vulnerable to the virus, including within Aboriginal communities.
David Heffernan, the president of the NSW branch of the Pharmacy Guild, said an emerging concern was booster shot appointments having to be cancelled if the town’s only pharmacist had to isolate.
Rutherford said others pressures for regional towns were coinciding with Covid-19 outbreaks, such as Queensland’s flooding.
She said towns including Cherbourg were experiencing outbreaks while being cut off from nearby towns like Kingaroy, which residents relied on for medical services.
