MLHD's acting director for public health Alison Nikitas said the district was working with the Department of Education to support the roll out of RATs across 27 Albury primary and secondary schools.

"The schools themselves are the ones who are actually rolling them out and we'll be communicating that with parents," she said.

"About half the the kits have arrived in Albury at the moment and we're expecting the rest today (Tuesday) or tomorrow (Wednesday), so they should be distributed out to parents later this week."

Ms Nikitas said parents would be given instructions on how to use the tests.

"It's not mandated, but we encourage parents to participate in program," she said.

"It will be done twice a week over the next two weeks, so we're yet to have a start date, but that will occur in the next few days."

Ms Nikitas said MLHD was supporting the Department of Education's roll out of RATs by providing pathways for confirmatory testing.

"If you do actually get a positive or a non-negative RAT ... that needs to be confirmatory tested," she said.

"So what we have organised is a pathway for anyone who gets a non-negative RAT to attend our testing site and to have a PCR test taken, which will then be expedited through our lab."

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Ms Nikitas said there were two different RAT programs.

"The first is the one I'm talking about today, which is the surveillance program," she said.

"It is really just about early identification of someone that may be positive, so [the test] can be done before school and if it comes up as a non-negative we would then rapidly test [the student] to see if they were positive.

"It lowers the risk of that student actually attending school and further transmission.

"There are other programs utilising RAT testing, which will be looked at in terms of trying to get close contacts back to school, so there is different programs around those tests."

Ms Nikitas said the MLHD was still seeing a significant number of new COVID-19 cases in people under 20 years old.

"About 44 per cent of those cases are in those younger age groups," she said.

"We are currently promoting vaccination and testing as a means to contain this outbreak, especially in those younger age groups, which haven't had as long to be vaccinated.

"So that 12 to 15 age group who commenced later vaccinations, we're really encouraging those children to come forward with their families for vaccination, and also to maintain testing rates.

"Because they haven't had their vaccination rates very high we are seeing transmission, so we would encourage everyone to still have limited activities until we can get those vaccination rates higher."

Albury Wodonga Health also reported the virus impacting young people.

AWH executive director for public health Lucie Shanahan said large numbers of COVID-19 cases were in the school aged population.

"As a result of this we have extended the vaccination clinic hours today (Tuesday) and tomorrow (Wednesday) at our High Street Hub through until 7pm," she said.

"To hopefully make it a little bit easier for children, young people and families to come forward for vaccinations over the next couple of days.

"We're really keen to try and vaccinate as many young people between the ages of 12 and 18 as we can and that is because we are seeing ongoing new cases particularly in the primary school and high school age range."

The High Street Hub will also be open for later hours on Thursday evening, including for walk in appointments.

Ms Shanahan said there was plenty of availability.

"We really do encourage you to come forward for your vaccination as soon as you can," she said.

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