MORE than 600 people were tested by Sunraysia Community Health Services (SCHS) as part of the Victorian Government’s statewide COVID-19 testing blitz in Mildura last week.
SCHS tested 476 people at its drive through pop-up clinic behind the Mildura Central Target store on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
SCHS tested 188 people at the walk-through clinic at Thirteenth Street, Mildura on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week.
The pop-up drive-through clinic allowed people with mild symptoms of the virus to be tested, while the walk-through clinic encouraged asymptomatic people working in health care, aged care, agriculture, construction, emergency services and retailing to take the test.
Clinic programs manager Shelley Faulks said SCHS was happy with the number of people who decided to get tested for the virus.
“It was really, really great to see so many of our community members volunteering to come forward so they could count towards that data,” she said.
“We had a very good response.
“It was really pleasing that our community got to have a snapshot of what’s going on locally and that we got to inform the government’s decision as to what restrictions lifting might look like.”
None of these tests has so far yielded a positive result for COVID-19.
“Some of the results are still being processed, ” Ms Faulks said.
“Clearly the pathology lab still has a very busy workload at the moment with everything that’s been happening. We were getting some results back within 24 hours but the weekend has held them up a little bit.”
Now that the government’s testing blitz is over, people in the asymptomatic category will not be able to be tested for the virus.
However, people experiencing symptoms associated with COVID-19 can still call the SCHS hotline on 5021 7653 to set up a test.
