THERE has been a big increase in the number of COVID tests and vaccine booster shots administered this week at East Grampians Health Service as infection numbers grow across Victoria.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was another horror day, with 21,997 positive cases of COVID-19 detected across the state.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, testing sites in Melbourne and regional centres like Ballarat have reported massive numbers of people queued to get tested, with some people waiting up to five hours.<\/p>\n
East Grampians Health Service Interim Chief Executive, Peter Armstrong, said there had been a noticeable increase in people attending the Ararat swab clinic and vaccination centre.<\/p>\n
He said some of those people are definitely travelling to Ararat from outside the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are trying to get a test wherever they can and some of the bigger regional sites like in Ballarat have had to close for various reasons, whether it was the storm yesterday or staffing, I think all health services are finding it hard to cover vaccines and swabbing as well as their normal services,\u201d Mr Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always had a percentage of people who will travel to get a swab and it\u2019s not a big problem, they travel up and get a swab and go home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Armstrong said EGHS had changed the testing criteria to ensure the smooth running of its swab clinic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve changed the criteria a bit so we made it just for people who are close household contacts (of a COVID positive person) or people who have symptoms. We were finding we were doing a lot of asymptomatic testing that doesn\u2019t result in positive cases and we\u2019re doing it by appointment so we can control the traffic flow a bit better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still doing 140 swabs (a day) so there is capacity for that to increase but now we are back vaccinating as well it does stretch things a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been averaging 60 to 80 (tests) a day for the last couple of weeks but it\u2019s getting busier and busier,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Armstrong said he was pleased by the volume of people attending Pyrenees House to get vaccine booster shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really good that people are taking up the opportunity. The vaccination clinic opened up again on Monday and people were waiting outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing a mixture of appointments and walk-ins, our capacity is around 200 a day and we\u2019ve hit that target every day this week. We\u2019re trying to increase our capacity there as well,\u201d Mr Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur staff have been amazing since the start of this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THERE has been a big increase in the number of COVID tests and vaccine booster shots administered this week at East Grampians Health Service as infection numbers grow across Victoria. Yesterday was another horror day, with 21,997 positive cases of COVID-19 detected across the state. In recent weeks, testing sites in Melbourne and regional centres […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/phouse.jpg?fit=1920%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-98","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}