Victoria will provide free rapid antigen tests to the families of young children as authorities look to slow the spread of the virus within learning centres.
The tests will be free for all children aged three to five attending early childhood education services, Premier Daniel Andrews announced on Tuesday.
More than 1.6 million of the tests will be delivered to early learning centres in the coming weeks for families to use for voluntary, twice-weekly testing.
Mr Andrews said it would give parents peace of mind.
“It’s all about trying to support every family to have that peace of mind to have a sense of certainty about whether their child has got this virus,” he said.
“It is wildly infectious, young people can have it and not present with any symptoms (but) if you can find those cases, then you can do something about it and cut off those chains of transmission.”
The move expands on free rapid antigen tests already available for students in the state’s primary and secondary schools.
While testing is not mandatory, it’s been strongly recommended that students test for the virus twice a week on school days for the first four weeks of Term 1.
Students currently don’t need a negative RAT to attend schools but must stay home if they have symptoms.
Victoria recorded 9785 new cases and 20 Covid deaths in the past 24 hours.
There are now 575 infected people in Victorian hospitals, with 72 in intensive care and 30 on ventilators.
Victoria’s pre-Omicron peak for Covid hospitalisations was 851 in October when the state was battling a surge in Delta infections.
In contrast, there are 2068 people in NSW who are in hospital with Covid.
More than 93 per cent of eligible Victorians are fully vaccinated and the state has 58,449 active cases.
A total of 19,404 PCR tests were taken onxjmtzyw Wednesday and 15,870 vaccines were administered at state hubs.
Victoria’s school students and teachers have been told to brace for a “rocky” few weeks with Covid statistics revealing a sharp rise in infections.
The state’s Education Minister James Merlino conceded schools were bracing for a spike in cases, revealing numbers had risen in the first week of Term 1.
On Friday 964 students and 150 teachers tested positive, while over the weekend a further 607 students reported infections.
Mr Merlino said around 0.6 per cent of the school population was testing positive, and expected cases to grow in the next few weeks.
“We knew that the first few weeks of school would be a bit bumpy, we knew we’d get some positive cases, but it’s better to support those many hundreds of students and teachers than have one million students at home remote learning,” he said.
“We’re delivering 14 million rapid antigen tests to make sure we get to cases early because that will drive down numbers overall.”
