UPDATE – FRIDAY 3.45pm
MILDURA’S mystery COVID-19 case that appeared in Thursday’s numbers has been rejected by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Officials suspected the case was a false positive however until re-testing was completed the case was treated as active.
The case will be removed from Saturday’s numbers as a result.
UPDATE – FRIDAY 11.10am
MILDURA’S mystery COVID-19 case in Thursday’s numbers remains under investigation as the state recorded 11 new coronavirus cases on Friday.
Premier Dan Andrews updated the public on the status of the “very low positive” case in his Friday morning press conference as still being re-tested.
There are currently five active cases in regional Victoria, with the Mildura case included at least for now.
“That will be closed out one way or another quite soon,” he said.
“We still believe it is likely to come out of these numbers.”
Mildura has had 6 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, seven if this latest case is a confirmed positive.
MORE TO COME
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ORIGINAL STORY — Thursday
MILDURA has a new active case of COVID-19, but officials are confident it will be reclassified.
Victoria recorded 11 new cases overnight, with two of those in regional Victoria — the other in Mitchell Shire.
Premier Daniel Andrews said despite this, the Mildura case may be reclassified as more information comes to hand.
“The case in Mildura though is a very low positive and there’s been further testing done,” he said.
“We have a high degree of confidence that will be a false positive but for the purposes of an abundance of caution that will be counted in our numbers.
“But we may see a reclassification as we have reclassifications from time to time.”
Deputy chief health officer Professor Allan Cheng said testing involved targeting a small DNA sequence and amplifying it to a point the virus can be detected.
“If it doesn’t take many cycles to amplify the virus before we can detect it, there must have been a lot there to start with,” Prof Cheng said.
“The case in Mildura, it took 42 cycles to amplify, to get a positive result. That’s a pretty low positive, so then the next step is to go and test on another machine, to see if it is positive, and then it’s sent to the reference laboratory for confirmation.
“Obviously we want to be very, very careful that, you know, if we’re gonna call it a false positive, that, actually, it is.
“That’s why we go through these additional testing steps to make sure.”
If further testing confirms the case as positive it will be the seventh COVID-19 case attributed to the Mildura LGA.
