It has been 14 days since an infectious Victorian couple travelled through Dubbo on their way to Queensland's Sunshine Coast, despite Melbourne being in lockdown.
There were zero new locally acquired COVID-19 cases in New South Wales yesterday, two weeks since the couple visited the inland city.
Despite being declared COVID-safe, Dubbo cafe owner Errin Williamson has been hit hard after being named as a place where a potentially infectious person visited.
"It's been crippling to a small business such as ours.
"Our venue stands to lose around $30,000 over the past week due to staff isolating, food wastage and bookings lost."
'Bush telegraph' hurts business
Ms Williamson's CSC cafe had six key staff members working the day it became a potential exposure site.
They have been self-isolating but all returned negative test results.
The cafe was able to remain open after authorities found its normal cleaning processes were sufficiently thorough.
Ms Williamson says the "bush telegraph" of misinformation being passed around has not helped business.
"One lady on social media called it the 'Church Street cafe cluster', which it's not a cluster because there's been no cases," she said.
"It's pretty frustrating.
Competitor lends a hand
Ms Williamson and Krysten Hedger are business rivals by day and friends by night.
As well as the CSC cafe, Ms Williamson also owns a restaurant in Dubbo.
It was understaffed over the long weekend due to some of her restaurant employees needing to keep the cafe running during the day.
On Sunday night, Ms Hedger and her staff were customers at the establishment but they opted to cut their dinner short to lend a hand.
"We were there on Sunday night for a staff get together because we were closed on the public holiday Monday," she said.
"So I was washing dishes, one of my other staff were seating people, other girls were sanitising tables."
'Keeping supporting them'
Ms Hedger said it was important for everyone to rally behind the impacted businesses because it could have easily been any other location in town.
"It's so important to keep supporting them," she said.
"If they [the businesses affected] didn't have people signing so promptly then we might not have known these people had come into town."
Ms Williamson says it was great so many people turned out to support her other business but implored people to return to the her cafe as soon as possible.
Praise for high community testing
The Western NSW Local Health District chief executive Scott McLachlan has thanked local communities after more than 3,000 COVID-19 tests were administered since last Thursday.
But he says the region still needs to be on high alert for the next week.
"The communities of Coonabarabran, Dubbo, Forbes and Parkes really rallied behind the call to come forward for testing," Mr McLachlan said.
"This may well not be the last time that we see a case of COVID-19 in or coming through our district, so it’s important we keep that alertness and momentum going."
Mr McLachlan says the 15 businesses impacted across the west by the infectious travellers have all been deemed safe to resume trading.
He encouraged people to return to those establishments without hesitation.
"The 15 services have been fantastic, making sure we could do contact tracing," Mr McLachlan said.
"If staff were close contacts then they were tested immediately and the services declared safe.
