Coronavirus Australia live news: Pair who allegedly fled Melbourne airport to avoid hotel quarantine facing $19k fine each

No fine if you try to get tested but miss the 24 hour window, Mr Weimar says

By Joseph Dunstan   

  

Mr Weimar said he understood there were long waits at testing sites and provided people returned from New South Wales were doing their best to get tested, they would not be fined if they were unable to get the test within 24 hours of their arrival in Victoria.

      

“But equally, just because a queue is a bit long, it doesn’t mean there is no reason to get tested and to go to the beach instead,” he said.

   

“If you can’t get through the queues, I will ask you to isolate.”

    

He said there would be a 20 per cent boost to testing capacity across the state today, including additional testing capacity in Lakes Entrance, where high-risk exposure sites were listed this morning.

       

He said operating hours had been extended in the Bairnsdale area as well and again encouraged people to go to the website.

   

He said he felt that “collectively, as Victorians, we are on top of this”.

   

He pointed to the fact that all of the positive cases had come from the close contacts of confirmed cases, there was great cooperation from businesses and a great response from Victorians to the difficult border closure.

   

“Let’s be clear, we still have work to do … I would not exclude the possibility that we’ve got other chains of transmission that we haven’t spotted,” he said.

  

“The job of all of us within the health services as well as across the state is to maintain that momentum over the next few days.”