The free supply of COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) comes to an end early next week.
Te Whatu Ora says the free tests collected now will have a shelf life ranging from December 2025 to May 2027. From October, the tests will only be available for purchase.
The SMC asked experts to comment.
Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles, microbiologist, University of Auckland, comments:
“It is extremely depressing that the government continues to remove support for measures that enable people to protect themselves and others from COVID-19. Every day, researchers worldwide learn more about how COVID-19 infections can impact us, and the news isn’t good.
“Just recently, researchers from the UK published the results of their human challenge study. Healthy volunteers were subjected to a barrage of baseline tests and then intranasally infected with the original SARS-COV-2 virus. The researchers found that those volunteers who became infected exhibited significant cognitive deficits compared to those who didn’t get infected. These deficits were largest for memory-related tasks and were sustained for at least a year (which is when the volunteers were last tested) with no signs of improvement. Infected volunteers also had increased levels of some markers of brain injury in their blood. Interestingly, none of the participants reported experiencing cognitive symptoms despite the clear objective evidence. It’s worth noting here that the volunteers experienced what would be classed as a mild COVID-19 infection.
“Rapid antigen tests are a really important tool to help people determine whether they have COVID-19 and, if so, take the necessary precautions to prevent spreading the infection to others. They shouldn’t only be available to those who can afford to buy them. For people who have expired tests at home, these will likely still work for a few months after the expiry date; they will just become less and less sensitive and so less and less reliable. A positive result will still mean you have COVID-19, but a negative result wouldn’t necessarily mean you don’t have COVID-19.”
No conflicts of interest.
Professor Michael Plank, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, comments:
“One argument for keeping free RATs is that getting rid of them will increase inequity because they will be unaffordable for many. However, we also need to look at the cost of continuing to provide free RATs, and whether we could get more benefit from spending that money elsewhere in the healthcare system. The government spent $410 million on RATs up to July last year and this number will have increased since then.
“From a public health point of view, the basic message should be that if you are sick you should try to avoid infecting other people. That’s still true even if you test negative for Covid because you could have another respiratory illness such as influenza. Using RATs to test asymptomatic people is very inefficient as it likely requires hundreds of tests just to find one case, so the costs mount up quickly. As a tool for reducing the annual number of infections, testing probably has a very marginal effect now that we have high population-level immunity from vaccines and prior infections.
“From a surveillance point of view, RATs are of limited use because we have no idea how many people are sick but not testing. So looking at indicators like hospitalisations and GP visits in tandem with wastewater testing and genomic sequencing is more useful.
“So overall it seems likely that the money we have been spending on RATs could have a bigger impact elsewhere, such as targeted vaccination campaigns for high-risk groups or extending free influenza vaccine eligibility.”
No conflicts of interest declared.
Professor Michael Baker, Department of Public Health, University of Otago, comments:
“It is important that Government continues to provide access to free Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) for diagnosing Covid-19 infection. Otherwise, there is a huge equity problem where RATs are only available for those who can afford them, and low-income New Zealanders miss out on their benefits.
“This equity issue matters because RATs are still useful to protect the health of individuals and those around them.
“For older people and those with underlying health conditions, a positive test is needed to qualify for antiviral treatment like Paxlovid. Such treatment reduces the risk of serious illness, hospitalisation, and Long Covid so has health and economic benefits for New Zealand. But treatment must be started within five days of illness, so rapid testing is important.
“RATs are also useful for distinguishing Covid-19 from other respiratory infections. That knowledge will hopefully motivate people to take at least five days of self-isolation and not go to work, school or social events and infect others. After this self-isolation, a test is also useful to see if a person has cleared the infection and unlikely to be infectious to others.
“Finally, RATs are a useful screening tool in some situations. Particularly during a Covid wave it can be a good idea to test before visiting people in some settings, such as rest homes, to reduce the chance that you are infected with Covid-19 without knowing it.
“Like all tests, RATs need to be used correctly and for the right purposes as part of a carefully developed strategy to reduce the harms causes by Covid-19. Before withdrawing a free supply of these tests, we need to see evidence that the use of RATs is no longer justified, and that Aotearoa New Zealand has sufficient measures in place to manage the large health and economic harms being caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.”
No conflicts of interest.
Associate Professor Lesley Gray, Department of Primary Health Care & General Practice, University of Otago, comments:
“It is disappointing that the availability of free COVID-19 RAT tests will cease next week. COVID-19 is still very much amongst us in our communities, and around 50 people a week are still being hospitalised with COVID-19.
“I would like to see free RAT tests continue for families and/or carers of people who are at higher risk of serious symptoms if they were to contract COVID-19 (e.g. older people, certain pre-existing health conditions such as heart disease, asthma, COPD).
“We know that some transmission of COVID-19 comes from asymptomatic transmission and scientific studies show that the use of face masks has a protective effect for people exposed to COVID-19 infection in the community. Face masking continues to be a good personal protective tool for those who are able to wear a mask.”
No conflicts of interest.