SA records 3,493 new COVID-19 cases, 125 in hospital

South Australia has recorded 3,493 new COVID-19 cases, with 125 people in hospital.

Twelve people remain in intensive care and one is ventilated.

Premier Steven Marshall said the state would change its close contact testing protocols from PCR tests to rapid antigen tests (RATs) in the coming days.

“At the moment we’ve got plenty of PCR capacity within our testing system in South Australia and so we are asking close contacts to have their PCR tests,” he said.

“We will evolve to a RAT test to preserve the PCR testing for those people who are symptomatic.”

Mr Marshall said rapid antigen tests would be given to close contacts for free.

“That will just be for close contacts, not those people who are symptomatic in the general population.

“They are the ones we are really want to preserve our overall PCR testing capabilities for.”

Rapid antigen tests have been hard to find on shelves, leading to reports of excessive prices.

“I’ve got no tolerance whatsoever for people that are price gouging during this period of time,” Mr Marshall said.

“There is a global shortage on this at the moment and so we obviously need to need to make sure we can get these into the hands of people at a cost effective price and that’s precisely what we’ll be able to do.

“We just need to get through this little interim period where demand is greater than supply but I’m sure that’s going to correct fairly soon.”

Mr Marshall said there were 21,097 COVID-19 tests taken yesterday.

He said 50 per cent of the people in ICU were unvaccinated.

“This is a massive, massive over representation of the general population and again I think this is the proof we all need that vaccination is absolutely critical,” he said.

Mr Marshall said 271 workers within SA Health had now tested positive, while 535 workers had been furloughed as close contacts.

“Those workers who are furloughed, most of those are still able to work remotely from home,” he said.

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