Earlier this month, staff at the Woolworths Epping store were sent home and the site underwent a major deep clean of the site after a positive COVID-19 case was thought to ave visited. Contact tracers linked the site as an exposure zone from a transaction on a banking app, however further investigations revealed the infected person had visited the Epping North Woolworths, about four kilometres away, instead. The error has caused a flurry of testing in the city’s north after health officials found COVID-19 fragments in waste water within the area. Anyone who visited the Epping North Woolworths on the corner of Epping Road and Lyndarum Drive on May 8, between 5.40pm and 6.38pm must get tested and isolate until receiving a negative result. As of Saturday, 13 individuals have been linked to the new site and are getting tested.Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley tried to explain the bungle on ABC radio on Saturday, saying the mix up was due to the electronic receipt and the Epping Woolworths being very close to another venue the positive case had visited. “Given that Epping Woolworths is right across the road from another established exposure site, the conclusion was drawn by the public health team that it was in fact Epping Woolworths,” he said. Woolworths Epping North is approximately 3.9 kilometres from the wrongly identified site. The three household contacts of the Wollert case have been retested and returned a negative result. Victorian Health said the wastewater cases are being detected more regularly due to more people now within the state’s hotel quarantine system. “These types of traces of coronavirus in wastewater are getting detected regularly – with more people leaving hotel quarantine – cleared of the virus but still shedding, and moving around our community,” the department said in a statement. “While the detections may be due to someone who has had COVID-19 but is no longer infectious continuing to shed the virus, it is also possible that it is due to an active but undiagnosed infectious case.”Staff at the newly identified Woolworths are being tested for the virus.
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