The NSW Health Minister has fought back against suggestions the state’s COVID-19 testing system is broken.

Queues outside Sydney clinics are seeing wait times as long as five hours and Mark Levy has heard from many people who were simply turned away.

Brad Hazzard pointed the finger at Queensland, which requires travellers to provide a negative PCR test result in the 72 hours before arriving in the state.

It comes after two test result bungles in NSW, which saw more than 900 people told they’d tested negative, despite being infected with the virus.

Mark Levy: “That’s 900 people who were allowed to go about their business on Boxing Day, maybe head into the city, do some Boxing Day sales…

“The whole system’s broke. Surely you would concede to me this morning, and to the thousands of people listening to The Ray Hadley Morning Show, what you are overseeing at the moment is a system that’s broken, surely.”

Brad Hazzad: “No, not at all. The system is actually doing far better than any other state by a long shot –”

Mark Levy: “So Minister, you’re telling me you’re going to back a system that’s got people lined up for four hours? Four hours of people that are queued up to get a test and you’re going to seriously sit here today and … say the system’s doing well. Really?”

Press PLAY below to hear the clash in full 

Mark Levy said he “wasn’t too impressed” with the answers he received from Mr Hazzard.

“If the Health Minister is seriously going to come onto this program and say the system’s working, well, I think we’ve got bigger problems in the state of NSW.”

Shadow health minister Ryan Park agreed the NSW government should put the “finger pointing” aside and concede “the system is at breaking point”.

“What we need now is a plan for how to exist,” he said.

“If that means bringing in the Commonwealth with additional resources and additional staff to get through this backlog of testing, let’s do that.

“Let’s make rapid antigen testing free and let’s get it out into the community.”

Press PLAY below to hear Ryan Park’s response 

Image: Nine News