A senior Victorian government minister has defended the decision to ban travellers from locked-down areas of Western Australia from entering the state.
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The travel ban took effect at 9pm on Sunday, just hours after WA Premier Mark McGowan announced a hotel quarantine worker tested positive to COVID-19.
The case ended the state's 10-month streak without community transmission and forced Perth and the Peel and South West regions into a five-day hard lockdown.
People who have been in the locked-down regions, which are now classified as red zones, since January 25 will not be allowed to enter Victoria without an exemption or worker permit.
Some 1700 people who have arrived in Victoria from the red zones since January 25 must be tested and isolate until they receive their result.
The rest of WA remains a green zone, meaning people can apply for a permit to travel into Victoria.
Victoria's COVID-19 Testing Commander Jeroen Weimar said people who have arrived from WA in the past week have received a text message urging them to get tested.
"There's a responsibility on the 1700 people who've come out from WA to make sure they go and get tested - and there's plenty of testing capacity here in Victoria to do just that," Mr Weimar told ABC radio on Monday.
"If we start to see people are not coming forward to get tested, then we will be phoning them, we will be reminding them. If we need to go knock on their doors we will do just that."
Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers Luke Donnellan said while he emphasised with Victorians stranded in WA, the travel ban was "protecting the whole community".
"No doubt about it, that is difficult. But by the same token, we need to be sure we don't have another round, we don't have another spread of this infectious disease getting out of control in our community," he told reporters.
"We know how easily it can happen, we know what the community has gone through."
Mr Donnellan said authorities would review the red zone once they receive further information from the WA government about the outbreak.
"But let me be clear, we don't want to be in a position whereby we're bringing coronavirus back into the state after the hard work the community's done to actually get on top of it," he said.
Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien said the border closure was a knee jerk reaction.
"The permit system just changes at the drop of the hat, it gives Victorians no confidence at all in leaving the state that the government won't change the rules literally with no notice," he said.
It comes as Victoria recorded a 26th consecutive day with no locally-acquired cases, though there was one case in hotel quarantine.
It brings the total number of active cases in the state to 21, with all of them in hotel quarantine. Three active cases are linked to the Australian Open.
A man in his 30s who received a weak positive test result on Saturday following a negative test taken two days earlier has been cleared of having COVID-19.
"Following a review of clinical, epidemiological and testing evidence, this case has been rejected and deemed negative," the health department said.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services has split into two new departments.
Both the Department of Health and the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing began operating from Monday.
The government said the split would allow for a "dedicated focus on our health system and on the social recovery of our state" as it moves into the recovery phase of the pandemic.
Australian Associated Press
