One hundred and twenty hours and counting.
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That was how long Kotara father-of-two Brendan Brooks had been waiting for COVID test results when he spoke to the Newcastle Herald on Monday morning.
Mr Brooks, who owns a website design business, had a sore throat on Tuesday last week and was tested at Histopath's Honeysuckle clinic the next morning.
Five days later, he had missed family Christmas get-togethers but watched a lot of cricket.
"The family went to my mum's for the traditional family gathering, but they came back and we made the most of the day," he said.
"We still had a nice day, so I'm not the outraged victim.
"I spent the whole of Boxing Day watching the cricket and drinking beer. I made hay while the sun shines."
Mr Brooks said there was "no really useful way" of contacting testing labs like Histopath while awaiting results.
Newly elected Maitland mayor Philip Penfold took to Twitter on Monday to express his frustration at the lack of testing in the town over Christmas as the omicron outbreak surged.
"The COVID testing availability in Maitland over the holidays is not good enough," he wrote.
"Zero testing in a city of 90,000 for at least 2 days ??"
Maitland recorded 55 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Sunday and has registered hundreds of new infections this month.
Testing stations, which have curtailed their hours since Friday, have been overrun as omicron case numbers have exploded first in the Hunter then in Sydney.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard said on Sunday that wait times had pushed out to as long as four days and urged people to avoid being tested unless they had symptoms, had been identified as a close contact or were fulfilling requirements for interstate travel.
But, as reported in Monday's Herald, this policy has the potential to leave COVID cases undetected.
Mr Brooks said he was surprised not to receive his results by Christmas, especially given he was symptomatic.
"My last test came back in 36 hours," he said.
"I thought, for sure, 48 hours at the most. Even 72 hours I could still have gone to Christmas.
"It wasn't easy, especially Christmas day, but yesterday was fine."
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