Albury Wodonga Health says it's preparing for another surge of cases in the coming weeks and is urging residents to come forward at the first hint of COVID-19 symtoms.
Executive director of public health Lucie Shanahan said modelling predicted there would be a second quick increase of cases from December.
"So the middle of December through to about the middle of January," she said,
"We know that the Burnett Institute in corroboration with the Department of Health in Victoria are continually revising the modelling as best they can, but there's so many factors that go into it, it's not an easy straight forward process to predict.
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"But we are working on the premise that we will see an increase in cases as we come into December, so Albury Wodonga Health are continuing to prepare for that to ensure that we do have the services, the staff and all the resources to respond to that predicted surge.
"We hope we don't see it, but we are certainly working in line with the predicted model they've got."
Ms Shanahan said gradually decreasing case numbers at the moment was "pleasing news", but it was not so pleasing that testing numbers had also been reducing.
"Whilst we are pleased to see the reduction in cases and certainly the stabilisation of numbers across the LGA's that we support, we are continuing to ask people to come forward for testing at the earliest sign of symptoms," she said.
"Through mapping the cases we've had in the outbreak recently, we can identify that most people have had symptoms between four and six days before they've been coming forward for testing.
"So we are asking people to come forward for testing at the earliest hint of a symptom, so that we can be sure that we're on top of any COVID that may be circulating in our community at this time."
Ms Shanahan said she believed there were positive cases undetected in the community, particularly in Albury-Wodonga and Wangaratta.
"For the number of tests that we were completing there was a high number of positives being returned out of those tests," she said.
"Our test positivity rate was sitting in between two and three per cent last week...a test positivity rate that we look for is anything below one per cent.
'So if we can get our test positivity rate down below one per cent for a number of days in a row, that will probably give us the greatest confidence that we have the best measure of COVID-19 across the community."
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Victoria Ellis
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
