Hawthorn East resident Stuart Hamill arrived at a testing site at 3.50am after being turned away twice yesterday at sites that had reached their capacity. 'Someone’s been under-prepared for this. It shouldn’t have been such a big shock at Christmas.' ...
Demand for COVID-19 testing continues to overwhelm Victorian sites, with many forced to close within minutes of opening on Thursday morning.
By about 8am, the list of testing sites that had to close because they were over capacity had grown to about 18About 8.15am, the wait time at Hume City Council was listed as 30 minutes, and at Keilor Basketball Netball Stadium, Melton Football Club, Mickleham Road in Tullamarine and Victoria University’s St Albans Campus, it was 90 minutes.Stuart Hamill queued from before dawn to get a COVID-19 test.
“My mother is 70, and I’ve got to go to Wagga Wagga. I can’t get to family Christmas without a negative result.”Another 85,112 COVID-19 test results were processed across the state on Wednesday, down from 92,262 on Tuesday, which was a new testing record for Victoria.There were 398 people in hospital in the state with the virus, of whom 72 were active cases in intensive care. Thirty-nine people were on a ventilator.
Mr Weimar said he hoped fewer people would clog up the state’s testing system for “bureaucratic reasons”.
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