Bendigo Health chief encourages vaccination as Victoria enters lockdown

Chief executive Peter Faulkner encouraged the community to remain vigilant as the state enters seven days of lockdown from 11.59pm on Thursday.

"There are only five reasons to leave home and vaccination is included in those," he said. "Don't stay home, come and get vaccinated."

More than 100 people are isolating after they were deemed close contacts of a positive case that visited the Axedale Tavern on Sunday.

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Mr Faulkner said the Department of Health and Human Services contact tracing team was still investigating the extent of contacts within central Victoria.

"Contact tracing has been continuing and is ongoing," he said.

"Contact tracing by it's very nature is dynamic, as soon as you get a new piece of information then contact tracing continues."

Around 440 people were tested for coronavirus across Bendigo Health's screening centres and in excess of 260 people were tested in Cohuna.

Bendigo Health has extended screening services until 6.30pm and is enforcing tighter visitation restrictions in hospital and aged care facilities.

In hospitals, visitation can occur for end of life, to support a partner during birth or a parent accompanying a child.

"We are in the process of making a number of changes within our facilities," Mr Faulkner said.

"We will, of course, be observing the restrictions that have been announced and taking a number of other actions in line with the state government road map.

"This will include reducing the discretionary or non-urgent appointments which may have some impact with surgeries but this enables us to keep our community safe by not bringing people in unnecessarily into a high-risk environment and to deploy staff to other high priority areas.

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"We already had some restrictions as from yesterday, particularly in light of the risk of an outbreak in Bendigo.

"We do have visiting pods at aged care facilities so we can have non-contact visits.

"The rest of our restrictions will be put in place from open of visiting hours tomorrow."

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