The health and safety of Tasmanians is our number one priority as we face the challenges presented to us by the COVID-19 pandemic.
We welcome the critically important partnership between the Australian Government, Minderoo Foundation and private pathology providers, which has successfully secured an additional 10 million COVID-19 test kits and pathology equipment to be installed in Tasmania and around the rest of the country.
This will allow us to further increase testing capability and expand the testing criteria particularly as we work to address the current COVID-19 outbreak in the North West of the state.
This diversification of COVID-19 testing ensures adequate testing capability as we ramp our testing across the state over the next few weeks, particularly when we know there have been uncertain supply lines and global shortages.
Expanded testing will also help protect health workers on the front line, and ensures the health care systems across the state remain strong and resilient to future challenges.
The Tasmanian Department of Health is working closely with Sonic Healthcare and our public pathology laboratory to increase our testing capacity.
I would like to thank the Federal Government for continuing to enter these types of partnerships to enable us to keep Tasmanians safe as we try to supress this virus.
These are challenging times, and as the situation evolves by the hour we will continue to do everything we can to explore ways to better protect and care for Tasmanians.