The first nine coronavirus test results for close contacts of a meat inspector who visited Warrnambool's Midfield Meats are negative.
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Midfield Group general manager Dean McKenna said company management had just been given the welcome news.
"More than 500 other tests of workers have come back negative as well, but we will be waiting until all test results come back before we resume work again," he said.
"We've had members of the Department of Health and Human Services on site for more than four hours today where they inspected the abattoirs and we've had talks.
"The DHHS officials were very complimentary with how we've handled this situation.
"We informed them we're well aware of our responsibilities to our workers and the local community.
"We've got our fingers crossed the other tests come back negative."
Close to 900 workers were tested on Monday after a decision to close the Midfield processing site late on Sunday night.
A meat inspector who visited the west Warrnambool abattoir on Tuesday last week returned a positive COVID-19 test on Sunday.
Meatworks management was on Sunday given the green light by the health department to continue operations on Monday it had decided to err on the side of caution for the safety of workers and the community.
All staff undertook tests on Monday through South West Healthcare.
The Warrnambool situation developed while a cluster outbreak surfaced at Colac's Australian Lamb Company abattoir.
That meatworks has been closed for a fortnight and all staff told to self isolate for 14 days.
So far 27 people in the Colac community have tested positive for coronavirus after an abattoir worker returned a positive test on July 10.
Currently 13 cases are linked to the Colac abattoir.
That led to a positive test of a student at Trinity College and that school and two primary schools have been closed.
With some Hampden league junior players attending Trinity College, games at Camperdown and Cobden were called off last Saturday.
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