By Mitchell Clarke
A new drive through Covid-19 testing facility will open in Pakenham at the IYU Reserve, with the intention of testing about 320 people per day.
The new testing station on Henry Road will be opened seven days a week, from 1pm on Saturday 27 June, before it opens from 9am to 12pm and 1pm to 4pm from Sunday 28 June onwards.
The announcement will provide some relief to the existing Pakenham Health Centre, which is currently testing between 150 and 200 people a day.
Eastern Victoria MP Harriet Shing said she was “really hopeful” that Pakenham could be knocked off the hotspot suburb list.
As of Friday 26 June, there were five active cases of coronavirus in the Cardinia Shire.
“We’re getting in early to Pakenham to make sure that we can actually knock that on the head but everyone has a part to play,” Ms Shing said.
“This is a really, really important goal to have. We want to make sure that as we move into identifying suburbs rather than focusing on entire local government areas, that we are talking about Pakenham, and not the Cardinia Shire.”
Ms Shing said healthcare workers were working around the clock to increase availability and accessibility to securing a test in the area.
“It’s really wonderful to see so many people coming to get tested. It’s a good challenge to have. People have been really patient and it’s now about ramping up the amount of testing,” she said.
“We need to make sure that people are aware that we’re not testing for ourselves, we’re testing for the ones we love, we are testing for those who are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed.
“This is a collective effort. It’s a community effort as a whole, working towards a state health response that requires every single person, every single family and every single community to do their part.”
Bass MP Jordan Crugnale said the State Government was looking to carry out 100,000 tests over the next 10 days across the problem suburbs, which also included Hallam.
“We have a really high testing rate – we’re ranked sixth in the world in terms of per capita – so the more testing we do, we’re going to find stuff, which is great,” Ms Crugnale said.
“The more we test, the more we can find active cases and the sooner we can contact trace and try and suppress that area.”
