South Australia has recorded another COVID-linked death and 1,234 new cases of the virus, with health authorities now seeking to arrest a decline in PCR testing.
SA Health said the person who died was a man in his 70s who had tested positive for COVID-19.
There are 218 people in hospital, 13 in ICU and five on a ventilator. The figures are all similar to yesterday's.
The total number of active cases has declined again to 15,215.
Just 8,694 people had a PCR test in the latest reporting period — a major drop from the more than 20,000 tests being performed at the height of the Omicron wave.
Earlier, the SA government announced a change to the current advice around COVID testing, saying that anyone with symptoms should seek a PCR test.
While that has always been the case, a temporary exception was made as case numbers started to climb, with symptomatic close contacts permitted to use a rapid antigen test (RAT) to confirm their diagnosis.
But the Premier today said that, as case numbers continue to drop, PCR tests were becoming increasingly available and remained the preferred diagnostic tool.
"This is the Rolls Royce — it's highly sensitive, it works very well and you can get an accurate picture very, very quickly," Premier Steven Marshall said.
"We've got massive excess PCR capacity in South Australia — we got our capacity right up to around about 26,000 per day. We're at about half that at the moment.
"The demand is no longer there as our numbers come down and that's why we want people to move away from the rapid antigen tests."
The Australia Medical Association's vice-president Chris Moy has expressed support for the move, saying PCR tests are more accurate across the course of a patient's infection.
"While rapid antigen tests are more convenient … they have what you call a high false-negative rate, about 20 per cent," Dr Moy said.
"That means there's about 20 per cent of people who are going to have the infection but actually have a negative test, and that's particularly before they become infectious and after they become infectious, at the beginning and end of the infection."
Despite the move back towards PCR testing and away from RATs, the latter will remain available for asymptomatic close contacts — and their availability has also increased.
"What we are also going to be able to do as of today is to issue more RAT tests — not just two, to be taken on day one and day six — but we'll be providing four rapid antigen tests to be used through the course of that seven-day close-contact isolation," Mr Marshall said.
"I don't even know how to respond to that," Mr Marshall said today.
Labor leader Peter Malinauskas today repeated the accusation, saying COVID-19 announcements were "being conflated with electoral priorities".
But Mr Marshall hit back, saying it made sense to answer questions about case numbers at the same time he addressed other topics.
"I think it would be very odd if I knew that we had approximately 1,280 cases for me not to give it (the number)," he said.
