More Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) collection points are being established in some of our biggest cities to meet continued demand. 

On Saturday, 34,000 RAT orders were placed through the RAT requester site. Another 3.5 million RATs were sent out to collection sites around the country on Sunday. A total of a further 8 million RATs arrived in the country over the weekend.

‘The Ministry is working with DHBs so that 90% of the population will be able to collect their pre-ordered RAT within a 20 minute driving distance if they’re symptomatic or in a household with someone with symptoms,’ Deputy Chief Executive COVID-19 Health System Response, Bridget White said.

‘To meet this goal, there are already 300 collection points across the country and more are planned for this week.

‘To facilitate access in Christchurch, a large scale community testing centre will be up and running at the Christchurch Arena from today, the Wellington Region will have an additional collection site stood up from Tuesday, and Palmerston North will have three additional sites this week.

‘On top of the collection sites, some DHBs are delivering RATs to parts of the community who are unable to easily get to a collection site while others are distributing through community providers.

‘Last Thursday saw the biggest day for demand for RATs across the country with more than 1.5 million tests given out in 24 hours. Since then demand has been levelling out. For example, Friday’s volume was less than half of the previous day.

‘But as we see the high case numbers continue, further drive through only services and delivery options are also being considered.

‘There is ample supply of RATs in the country. We urge people to be patient and make sure they both need a test and are going to the right places to get one.

‘Separate to those new stocks arriving at the weekend, the Ministry has 9.3 million RATs in stock.  Over 10 million RATs were distributed throughout New Zealand last week.

‘We ask New Zealanders to be patient with staff at testing centres. They are working as hard as they can. Abusive or aggressive behaviour does not help anyone and may force centres to close due to health and safety reasons,’ Bridget White said.

Background

• Including GPs and pharmacies where supervised RAT is offered for people who are eligible and Māori and Pacific health providers who are distributing RATs to priority populations, there are more than 1000 places people can access these tests across the country.
• The easiest way for people who have COVID-19 symptoms or are household contacts is by ordering them online through the RAT requestor site and then picking them up from a collection site.
• When the Rapid Antigen Test requester system was first set up, there were 133,000 immediate orders placed resulting in more than 1.5 million RATs being given out on Thursday (3 March), enough to cover more than half a million New Zealanders.
• Collection sites are listed on the Health Point website.
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