Some public schools in Albury began distributing COVID-19 rapid antigen test kits home to parents on Thursday afternoon in an effort to identify infected children before they further spread the virus.
In total 27 primary and secondary schools across the city will participate in the trial, which will see students and staff voluntarily take home testing kits to use twice a week for two weeks as part of community surveillance.
Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning Sarah Mitchell said the aim of the pilot program was to minimise disruption to students' education and keep schools a safe place to learn.
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"This requires us to deploy every tool available to balance the risk," she said.
"We will be trialling the tests in two ways: a broad surveillance approach, along with close contact testing to reduce initial positive cases on school sites and reduce the amount of time close contact students need to spend away from school."
The Border's current outbreak is predominantly affecting young people aged between five and 18.
Rapid antigen tests or RATs are a quick and easy screening tool to help detect COVID-19 in people who do not have symptoms.
It involves a nose swab being placed in a chemical solution and results can be ready within 10 minutes.
If a child returns a 'negative' result, they can go about their day as normal, including attending school, but if they return a 'positive' or 'invalid' test result, they should isolate and get a COVID-19 PCR test at the Albury Entertainment Centre.
Participating schools will continue to hand out the RAT kits on Friday.
Parents are encouraged to take a RAT kit but it's not compulsory.
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Victoria Ellis
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
