South-west Victorian hospital staff report 'abusive' behaviour

Portland District Health chief executive Chris Giles said staff this week have seen instances of people being "verbally abusive and pressuring" to get tested ahead of others.

"I would like to remind everyone to be patient, we are very stretched with our clinical resources balancing many new demands at once whilst being mindful to keep our staff, patients and community safe," she said.

A new COVID-19 drive-through clinic has been opened up in Portland.

PDH has extra staff manning phone lines and have restarted elective surgeries back up to 75 per cent capacity.

Ms Giles said there had been a large increase in the numbers of people with viral infection symptoms in the community, with more than 150 calls from people with symptoms over the last two days.

"We stress that to streamline the testing process we are still asking everyone to firstly call our fever clinic number as this enables us to get all the paper work and testing kit labelling done before you enter the drive-through queue and enables us to speed up the process," Ms Giles said.

The hospital has also been working with the Port of Portland to provide the health support for seamen coming off ships being fumigated and staying in hotel quarantine to keep the community safe.

South West Healthcare has now screened 4574 people for coronavirus to date.

533 of those were in the last week alone.

Chief executive Craig Fraser said most people had been well-behaved towards staff.

"We've experienced similar to what Melbourne has, an increased demand for people wanting to get tested. Our community has been really mindful there is more pressure on the system and at this point of time we haven't seen anything that would display that type of behaviour," he said.

"We would just remind people to be patient because when there is more testing it increases the time to get your tests back."

In the first three days of this week, 93 people have presented at the Hamilton Base Hospital drive-thru clinic and emergency department to be tested.

Western District Health Service chief executive Rohan Fitzgerald said the last week has demonstrated that we should never take anything for granted when it comes to COVID-19.

"As a community, we all need to continually review and adapt our response to this challenging and dynamic situation," he said.

"I can't stress enough how important it is for people to continue to practice hand hygiene, keep social distance and not undertake unessential activities.

"This might mean forgoing things that we might otherwise take for granted, like a trip to Melbourne or another hotspot area".

WDHS has tested 1732 people for the virus, with seven of those testing positive.

The last positive test result in the Southern Grampians Shire was identified on April 10.

The blitz will target 50 per cent of residents in Keilor Downs, Broadmeadows, Maidstone, Albanvale, Sunshine West, Hallam, Brunswick West, Fawkner, Reservoir and Pakenham.'

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