A lot of the Western region's COVID infections are coming from household contacts, but there are concerns the dreaded hay fever season may lead to cases being missed.
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These are two of the revelations from the Chief Medical Officer of the Public Health Response Branch Dr Jan Fizzell, who is currently on secondment from Sydney.
"Our cases are often from households - somebody's been to work, somebody's been to the supermarkets, and unfortunately when they've been out of the house they've got COVID and they've brought it home with them," Dr Frizzell said.
"To be able to completely control and suppress the spread of COVID-19, we need to find every single case. And that means anybody with any symptoms, no matter how mild, if you've woken up with a bit of a headache and a bit of a sore throat, we need you to come forward and get tested."
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Testing numbers across the region were just under 4,000 on Thursday, a slight drop from the day before and a trend that's causing concern for the health authority.
"Please, when you've got COVID circulating in your community, if you've woken up and you've got a runny nose and a bit of a sore or scratchy throat, do not blame it on allergies.
"We have missed cases of COVID before from people blaming it on allergies."
Dr Fizzell also explained that Laboratories will send COVID test results directly to the person who was tested, and also upload those results to the the NSW Health electronic laboratory system. The health authority may be aware of the result from six to eight hours after the individual does.
They then spend days interviewing that person, potential close contacts and try to identify where the virus was transmitted.
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