Today the department listed the Melbourne Cricket Ground and 10 stores in the Chadstone Shopping Centre as potential acquisition sites for today’s positive case. An acquisition site is a place where this person may have potentially caught the virus. The man is not considered to have been infectious with COVID-19 when he went to the shopping centre and to the Boxing Day Test.
Anyone who was in The Great Southern Stand, Zone 5 of the MCG between 12.30pm and 3.30pm on 27 December, needs to get tested and isolate until they receive a negative result. A new testing site has been established today near Gate One at the MCG, however anyone who needs to be tested should attend the nearest available testing venue to them and not head into the MCG for testing.

It is estimated around 7000-8000 people from the possible acquisition site at the MCG will need to be tested.

Other possible sites for the source of his infection have also been identified at Chadstone Shopping Centre on 26 December between 6am-2pm. These include the following stores: Culture Kings, Huffer, JD Sports, Jay Jays, H&M, Uniqlo, Myer, Superdry, Footlocker and Dumplings Plus. The department is investigating further to determine more exact timings for the Chadstone store sites and this information will be updated on the DHHS COVID-19 website as soon as possible at Case alerts – public exposure sites.

Please get tested at your nearest available testing location. There are testing facilities at Chadstone and the MCG but these are likely to be very busy and we will divert people to other testing sites where possible. There are likely to be long waiting times at some of our sites and we are grateful for people’s patience.

The department is publishing expected wait times at testing sites on its website. The website also includes updated information about locations and hours of operation for testing sites at Where to get tested.

The number of active cases in Victoria is now 41 including 28 locally acquired cases, an increase of one since yesterday and 13 in hotel quarantine, an increase of two in the past 24 hours. 27 of these cases are linked to the Black Rock Restaurant cluster.

Victoria has now exceeded four million COVID-19 tests since the pandemic began almost 12 months ago.

Yesterday 37,509 tests were processed, bringing the overall testing total in Victoria since the pandemic began to 4,032,336.

There are now more than 200 testing centres in operation in Victoria, including new testing sites in areas where large numbers of close contacts and exposure sites have been identified.

As contact tracing interviews continue and the outbreak situation evolves, more exposure sites are being discovered and details of new exposure sites may change. These will be updated on our website soon after they are verified.

Information regarding COVID-19 is available at the Department of Health and Human Services website or by calling 1800 675 39.