More Victorians are testing positive to COVID-19 than ever before with long wait times expected as the Omicron variant continues to run roughshod throughout the state, but a leading epidemiologist believes the numbers could be even higher.
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The rate of Victorians testing positive has risen from 4.1 per cent on December 28, when 2738 of 66,683 tests came back positive, to 19.4 per cent on Monday, with 8577 positive results from 44,168 tests.
Portland's testing site at Portland District Health was seeing extremely high demand on Monday morning with bookings filled half-an-hour before the clinic opened, which sent officials scrambling to recruit all available extra staff. Wait times of more than 3.5 hours had been reported at Western District Health Service in Hamilton.
- 13 new cases in Warrnambool (41 active cases)
- Nine new cases in Moyne Shire (24 active cases)
- 11 new cases in Corangamite Shire (18 active cases)
- Eight new case in Southern Grampians Shire (15 active cases)
- 13 new active cases in Glenelg Shire (24 active cases)
- 12 new active cases in Colac-Otway Shire (81 active cases)
Rapid antigen tests are also in short supply following the tightening of PCR test requirements to only those with symptoms, household contacts or a positive rapid test.
Many Warrnambool residents took to The Standard's social media to report their struggles in trying to track the kits down and pharmacies posting signs alerting potential customers of their lack of stock.
One in five cases tested in Victoria is coming back positive, marking a ten-fold increase in the space of a few weeks.
Deakin University chair of epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett said while the increased rate of positive tests appeared alarming, it was to be expected as testing requirements became more targeted.
Professor Bennett said as the Omicron variant continued to spread and testing queues continued to grow, the daily number of new cases would become less reliable and less important than the number of people in hospital.
"When you look at the hard measures and hospitals are a hard measure, if someone's really unwell, they have to go to hospital and they would be tested, so they're more comparable to compare hospitalisations across states," she said.
"We just do not know how many cases we have out there, what we're worried about is how many people are in hospital and trying to keep transmission low enough to protect that end of it.
"They're the numbers we can look at and the only numbers that are reliable and that we can compare from now going back. The daily case numbers give you some indication in that they're a minimum number, but the true number could be twice that, who knows?"
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