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Australia’s Watchdog Worries About Price Gouging In COVID Testing

By  |  January 2, 2022

Josh Frydenberg has spoken to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims about concerns some suppliers are charging sky-high prices for Covid-19 rapid antigen tests.

However, ACCC staff, including Sims, are currently on holiday and do not return to work until Tuesday. The regulator is also limited in action it can take because it does not have the power to set prices and the treasurer has decided not to order it to conduct a formal inquiry.

It comes amid reports of soaring prices for RATs, which Scott Morrison this week said should be used by people concerned about whether they had Covid in order to take pressure off the public testing system, which delivers the more reliable but much slower polymerase chain reaction tests. There are reports overwhelmed pathology labs are taking as long as six days to return PCR results.

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