South-west hospitals ramp up coronavirus screening in line with state government's blitz

In a bid to understand if and how the coronavirus is spreading throughout communities, the Victorian government opened up testing for not only those with cold or flu-like symptoms, but for people who are asymptomatic.

Before April 29, testing was strictly limited to those who had been overseas or who had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for coronavirus.

From May 4 to 9, Southwest Healthcare screened 397 asymptomatic staff and 412 asymptomatic individuals through its drive through service.

The respiratory assessment clinic screened 239 symptomatic people and 41 symptomatic inpatients.

Since the testing blitz began, Western District Health Service screened 555 people. Of those, no positive results were detected.

Chief executive Rohan Fitzgerald said COVID-19 testing began in the Hamilton hospital on March 13 with a total of 892 people screened, about 62 per cent of these tests came in a recent 10-day period.

"The asymptomatic testing is critical, and from my perspective we need to continue to do more and more testing to ensure there aren't people unknowingly spreading the virus in our community," he said.

"We've had nearly 50 cars a day come through the Hamilton Base Hospital Drive-thru Clinic, with many people seeing the need to support the blitz to help us to better understand this insidious virus and to protect vulnerable people in our community."

Portland District Health tested 190 people on a single day and chief executive Christine Giles said by Friday they had tested around 10 per cent of the population of Portland, around 1000 people.

She said Alcoa, the Portland aluminium, Glenelg Shire Council and Kepple Prince were among the workplaces that participated in the testing blitz.

"It's been an absolutely fantastic take-up, the community has been really patient working with us to get these tests done," she said.

"At the moment we have no active cases of coronavirus here, everyone is doing a great job staying home."

She welcomed Prime Minister Scott Morrison's national three-step plan to get Australia running again and said the south-west was ready in event of a coronavirus outbreak.

"I think we've got really good testing capability and contact tracing ability to manage outbreaks without swamping health services," she said.

"As long as people are honest about where they have been and maintain physical distancing, hand washing and good cough and sneezing etiquette.

"We still need to be really cautious in relation to contact with other people

"Our medical staff are well trained, we know the virus is not going to go away and we've got a routine now with experienced staff who know what they're doing if we get outbreaks."

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