More than 1200 people in Canberra have been notified of potential exposure to COVID-19 and hundreds directed to test and isolate after a man who recorded a low-level positive test for the virus visited the city.
Testing sites dealt with demand not seen in months on Friday, after it was revealed the man in his 40s, from Sydney's north-western suburbs, visited the ACT on Monday, June 14. He visited the National Gallery of Australia and Via Dolce Pasticceria, which were subsequently identified as potential exposure sites.
Anyone who visited the Botticelli to Van Gogh exhibition and gift shop at the gallery from 12pm to 1.45pm, or visited Via Dolce Pasticceria on Bunda Street from 2.45 to 3.15pm, was asked to immediately self isolate until ACT Health provided further advice. They were also required to fill in a declaration form on the ACT Health website.
Late on Friday, some people received messages telling them to stay in isolation until further notice even if they receive a negative test result.
From Friday morning there was a surge in demand at Canberra's COVID-19 testing clinics, with people reporting waits of up to three hours at the EPIC drive-through clinic.
As of 1.30pm on Friday, more than 550 people had received a test in the ACT, which was well above average.
ACT chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman said health authorities were closely monitoring on Friday whether another testing site was needed to cope with the demand.
At this stage there are no plans to open another clinic, but extra staff have been rostered on at ACT testing clinics over the weekend.
As part of its contact-tracing efforts, ACT Health looked at Check In CBR and other ticketing data from the gallery to identify people who were at the venues.
It is the first time the Check In CBR application has been used for contact tracing. An ACT government spokeswoman said there had been about 1200 check-ins on the application across the National Gallery and Via Dolce Pasticceria around these times.
Those people were asked to be vigilant for even the mildest COVID-19 symptoms.
Dr Coleman said as the man had returned a low-level positive test, he was not highly infectious and the risk was very low.
"I can understand that this might be causing a little bit of confusion in the community, and we spent a lot of time with NSW Health trying to understand the situation," Dr Coleman said.
"What we do know is that this case has tested positive on a number of platforms but negative on others, so what that means is we are not 100 per cent sure that it is a case but we can't exclude the [possibility] that it is.
"It's certainly not highly infectious, because we would not get [these results], and there are a couple of options such as it may be an old infection, or it may be reacting to some other virus he has in his system at the moment."
