Last month, the hospital's emergency department saw one of it's busiest days to date with staff seeing 227 presentations on March 16.

While staff are eager to help patients, they urge people to ensure they are only presenting to the hospital's busy department for emergency care.

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"The community is returning to normal socialisation, including sports and community events, and people may not have accessed healthcare in a while," a Bendigo Health spokesperson said.

"People with chronic conditions may have deteriorated and need medical attention.

"We encourage people to contact their GP or use Nurse-on-Call for non-emergency issues, however we know there is limited access to primary care locally which is having an impact on presentations.

"We have enough staff to safely operate and all of our clinical spaces in ED are open.

"We will not turn anyone away but would like people to be aware there may be extended wait times."

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While some may think Bendigo's testing sites are laying bare, staff are seeing numbers increase at the hospital's McLaren street centre.

"We have noticed an upward trend in PCR testing since last week and they have mainly been people who are symptomatic but returning a negative Rapid Antigen Test," the spokesperson said.

"It's not just COVID-19 we're seeing at the moment, but a mix of illnesses as we are socialising more and mask mandates are changing.

"The screening clinic will continue to operate seven days-a-week for the foreseeable future."

People can see what the wait time is via the Bendigo Health website and make sure they're prepared at bendigohealth.org.au/emergencydepartment

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