In an attempt to catch undiagnosed COVID cases, and understand how much of the virus is present in the community, Western Australia will employ a new testing strategy.
Mark McGowan’s government has provided more than $130,000 to the Telethon Kids Institute to go door-to-door across a range of metropolitan Perth suburbs, asking household members if they would like to do a COVID-19 test.
The state's COVID-19 cases ballooned to 7151 new infections yesterday, the highest the state has ever recorded.
"We are very close to hitting the peak of COVID-19 cases in Western Australia, so now is the ideal time for this study to be conducted," WA Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said.
"We have always suspected that there are more COVID-19 cases in the community than daily testing results show." Sanderson said.
Residents will put saliva on the end of a cue tip which will go into a tube to be processed.
They will also be asked questions about their age, type of work or study and vaccination status.
The project aims to test a total of 875 people.
