Melbourne woman Jess spent two weeks thinking she had coronavirus when she didn't, because of a misunderstanding between the pathology lab and health authorities.
"We've been doing the right thing the whole way along," she said.
Her three-year-old son's results came back negative two days later, but Jess had to keep waiting. And waiting.
A week later, she called the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to chase up her results and was told someone from the lab would call her.
That night, she got a call from "someone at the results line" to say she had coronavirus.
"It was a really long call, they went into all the things I had to do," she said.
"My husband remembers me saying, 'could this be a mistake?'"
She was assured it wasn't.
So she went about contacting her work, her store was closed for a deep clean and 30 members of her team went to get tested and isolated while they waited for the results.
She notified her son's childcare, her mum's work closed for cleaning, her household went to get tested and waited for those results.
Then she got a text message saying she had, in fact, tested negative.
Deluge of tests blamed for bungle
She said she is not the sort of person to feel stress normally, but the mixed message was really confusing.
"It's caused me so much anxiety, it's been an absolute headache," she said.
She went home, isolated and got another test which came back negative.
"I'm celebrating by going to pick up my new glasses, which have been ready for a week," she said.
After two weeks, she said someone from the DHHS called her to apologise, but the past two weeks have been very confusing.
"It's been two weeks of an absolute headache, an absolute debacle, a really unnecessary stress."
A spokesperson from the DHHS said her case was "a miscommunication between the onsite doctor's call centre team and Dorevitch Pathology".
"Victoria's labs are working around the clock processing on average more than 25,000 tests a day," the spokesperson said.
Testing expanded in regional Victoria as cases appear
On Friday, Victoria recorded 428 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily increase since the pandemic began, and another three people have died from the virus.
Premier Daniel Andrews said a man in his 70s, a man in his 80s and a woman in her 80s had died from COVID-19, bringing the state's death toll to 32.
There are 122 Victorians in hospital, 31 of whom are in intensive care.
Of the new cases, 57 are linked to known outbreaks and 370 are under investigation.
Over the past two weeks, about 40 cases of the virus have been recorded in non-restricted local government areas.
Mr Andrews said the Government would be setting up new testing sites in parts of regional Victoria, despite the fact there were only around five new cases outside the lockdown zone on Friday.
"These things can change rapidly though and that is why additional test sites and expanded test sites are critically important," he said.
