Australia has reached a new milestone with the cost of Covid-19 testing stinging the taxpayer more than $1 billion.
Daily Mail Australia can reveal working Australians contribute between $42.50 and a whopping $85 each and every time someone is tested.
The milestone comes amid frustration health authorities are persisting with a ban on much cheaper $15 rapid antigen tests, which have been adopted around the world and produce accurate results in just minutes.
The cost of Covid tests in Australia has broken the billion dollar mark as calls to implement rapid antigen testing ramp up
Covid cases continue to soar in NSW, with thousands being tested each and every day
Rapid antigen tests could reduce costs and provide faster Covid test results, diagnostics experts believe
Daily Mail Australia can also reveal children suffering isolation in Melbourne have been visited by health officials guarded by soldiers.
Families were visited on Sunday by mistake after a Victorian health department bungle wrongly identified them.
One father, who asked to remain anonymous, said an official demanded to see his young son under the premise of a 'welfare check
On Friday, a little over 23.3 million Australians had been tested for the virus - at a cost to taxpayers of $760 million through the Medicare Benefits Schedule.
That number soared over the weekend, with the Australian Government Department of Health website registering 24 million tests to date on Monday - 173,128 over the past 24 hours.
In NSW, which recorded 145 new cases of Covid on Monday, it recorded 98,000 Covid tests as at 8pm on Sunday night.
Despite the number of tests, which now total more than 8.5 million in NSW, most of Australia remains under hard lockdown.
More than 1,000 people flooded the streets in Melbourne's CBD in protest of its latest lockdown, flouting stay-at-home orders to protest Covid restrictions, with many more taking to the streets in Covid-ravaged Sydney.
The demonstrators were seen abandoning face masks and disregarding social distancing, raising concerns the anti-lockdown rally could act as a super spreader for Covid-19.
The soaring costs have renewed calls for the Commonwealth and state governments to introduce cheap and effective rapid antigen tests to run in tandem with the more expensive polymerase chain reaction tests.
PCR tests, which require pathology testing inside a laboratory, remain the only tests available to the general public.
Last week, the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned pathology labs it would end its support for the tests from December 31 due to concerns over their accuracy.
'CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses,' it stated in an alert.
Rapid antigen testing kits can be bought over the counter in countries including Belgium
Health personnel speak to people queuing in their cars at a Covid-19 test site in Albert Park, Melbourne, last year
People line up at a Covid testing site in Prahran last week after a positive Covid case attended the Prahran Market in Melbourne. More than 900 people needed to get tested and isolate as the Melbourne lockdown continued.
Australian Defence Force soldiers are lobbing up at the homes of children as Victorian health officials do 'welfare checks'
