. @RogerCookMLA tells me WA has a "unique opportunity", with lots of testing capacity, to soon start testing non-symptomatic people for COVID-19.

"We have a unique opportunity to look everywhere for the virus."

Allows for re-opening of economy with much more confidence. @6PR

Now I'm off air, some notes on the significance of this. Just a few weeks ago we were facing exponential growth of cases and worried about running out of tests within days. Now we have lots of testing capacity, including the private labs, and a trickle of people in the clinics.

So.. we have lots of tests, and very few symptomatic people. Now we are in a rare position to be proactive, not reactive. We can do things like test random samples of population and try to hunt down any assymptomatic transmission.

This is a rare and very good spot to be in. Most jurisdictions are flat out just trying to confirm suspected cases.

You'd probably start deploying this extra capacity with testing vulnerable groups, health care workers, supermarket workers, aged care workforce, for example.

It will allow you a) to detect pockets of asymptomatic transmission and get on top of them with tracking and tracing. Or b) confirm with much greater degree of confidence that community transmission is not happening.

Either way, it gives you much greater confidence that you can keep track of COVID-19 as you progressively switch more things in the economy back on, and can potentially do so safely and more quickly than otherwise. This is the "unique opportunity" @RogerCookMLA is talking about.