Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has given an undertaking Wodonga will be "front of the queue" when rapid antigen testing becomes available next week.
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Member for Indi Helen Haines made an impassioned plea for help for her community to the House of Representatives on Tuesday night, describing the situation as "desperate" and calling for more resources.
"Imagine being so desperate to be tested for COVID-19, to do the right thing, so desperate not to be turned away yet again, that you would arrive at a testing centre and camp out at 4am. Because that is what is happening in Wodonga," she told the House.
"This is absolutely unacceptable."
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Dr Haines said regional communities had been left behind, with no plan to make sure they had the resources needed to respond to outbreaks.
"When asked about cases in Wodonga today (on Tuesday) the Victorian Chief Health Officer seemed unaware of what we are facing," she said.
"An equivalent sized outbreak in Melbourne would be around 3,000 cases a day.
"For us, this is a very serious challenge. And for smaller communities the numbers we are seeing are pushing our health services to the brink."
Dr Haines said "something has to give" as schools are having to contact trace, coordinate deep cleaning and offer both on-site and remote learning all at once.
And she pointed out that nowhere else in Australia had a cancer ward been converted to take COVID-19 patients, with no other options at Albury-Wodonga's main hospital.
"The federal and state governments have known this moment would come for more than a year, yet still regional health services are being left to respond without enough support from the major cities," she said.
