Screening ramps up across south-west Victoria for first day of COVID-19 testing blitz

On Monday morning South West Healthcare opened a drive-thru clinic to screen people showing no symptoms of coronavirus.

Every 18 minutes, a person drove into the Warrnambool Base Hospital underground car park to be voluntarily swabbed as SWH moved into blitz mode, said chief executive Craig Fraser.

"These tests don't take long so we expect to be able to test a person every few minutes once the demand increases," he said.

Nurses swabbed 19 people in just 90 minutes, while a second team travelled to Camperdown to screen asymptomatic Merindah Lodge aged care staff and a third team commenced onsite asymptomatic testing of Warrnambool Base Hospital staff.

Mr Fraser said additional nurses were redeployed test more people for COVID-19, as well as administration workers for data entry.

Warrnambool hasn't seen a positive case since March 24.

In Portland a total of 63 people were tested to kick off the week.

Portland District Health chief executive Chris Giles said 50 people were tested in the healthcare worker asymptomatic testing clinic at the hospital and a further 13 in the fever clinic, which is for symptomatic people.

No patients have returned a positive test yet at PDH.

In Hamilton on Monday 76 people were tested at Western District Health's drive-thru clinic.

Chief executive Rohan Fitzgerald said they started asymptomatic testing last Wednesday.

In that time 180 staff and 143 community members were tested.

There hasn't been a positive test at the Hamilton Base Hospital since April 11.

"We are seeing an excellent uptake of the asymptomatic testing program by both WDHS staff and the local community. The response is a reflection of people's desire to better understand the level of community spread of COVID-19 across the region," Mr Fitzgerald said.

"This valuable information will assist and inform our organisation to develop strategies that are responsive to the burden of disease in our local communities.

"The screening criteria that was in place up until last week captured between 3 and 13 people a day through the drive-thru clinic. The opening up of the screening criteria to include a broad cross-section of the community without any symptoms has captured 76 people today.

"Thank you to those people who have already come through the clinic, we welcome many more over the next week".

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