The Central Coast Community Women’s Health Centre received 20 free Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) last week to help keep community members safe.
The centre provides women with counselling, medical services, social groups, childcare and offer advocacy for those in need.
The tests were donated by Member for Gosford, Liesl Tesch, after her electorate office received 20 kits.
CEO of the Central Coast Community Women’s Health Centre, Theresa Mason, said the testing kits will be distributed across their three centres at Woy Woy, Wyoming and Wyong.
“We always appreciate the support Liesl offers our centre, and we were very grateful to receive the testing kits because as an essential service to the community this helps us be safe and be checked in a timely manner,” Mason said.
“With the increasing case numbers these tests will help us to be responsive and keep our services open.”
Tesch said the RATs were not requested by NSW Labor.
“Every day I am hearing of the lengths people are going to just to get their hands on a test which is not only inaccessible but also unaffordable, with price gauging only worsening,” Tesch said.
“Politicians should not have better access to RATs than the rest of the community.
“Instead, we should know first-hand how much of a struggle it is to locate a test and how expensive it is. We should experience the panic every other person in our community is experiencing, especially here on the Central Coast, where there seems to be less accessibility than in Sydney.”
A pack of 20 RATs were delivered to every electorate office across NSW.
It comes after NSW Health began including data on self-administered positive RATs to the daily COVID-19 data.
Recently, the number of positive RATs make up approximately 40 per cent of confirmed COVID-19 cases across the state.
However, with the lack of supply and reliability of RATs at the very forefront of the national conversation, the actual number of COVID-19 cases in the community is expected to be significantly higher.
Maisy Rae