The people of Orange have been told to "assume that COVID is circulating around" after two venues of concern were identified.
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The Village Bakehouse (Sunday, August 8, 10.50am - 12.10pm) and the Byng Street Café (Sunday, August 8, 12.50pm - 1.10pm) were added to the list of more than 50 other venues across Western NSW where a positive case has visited since the start of the outbreak.
Those working at the time have now been told to isolate, but it is not yet clear who the COVID-positive person was.
"Orange, please come out and get tested," Western NSW LHD boss Scott McLachlan said.
"We know that those locations of concern are a serious signal that someone has been in the community and in those locations infectious with COVID.
"We're not clear on if that was a traveller or who that is. Our contact tracing teams have obviously identified someone was in those facilities. There's certainly not an active case that's in Orange at the moment."
Also worryingly, he said people around the region have been leaving their home while in isolation despite Western NSW seeing its largest rise in COVID numbers since this outbreak began.
To 8pm yesterday, the region has seen another 35 cases identified which takes the total case number to 98.
That includes three new cases in Mudgee, although one is not living in Western NSW. The other 32 cases were all in Dubbo.
Mr McLachlan said that 'very worryingly", the vast majority were infection in the community prior to their diagnosis.
"The large proportion of our cases are Aboriginal. Also around 40 per cent of our cases are aged between 10-19," he said.
"Kids going out and playing, mingling with their friends, kicking a soccer ball, playing in the backyard, that is what's seeing COVID spreading around our community at the moment. This Delta strain is moving very quickly between people.
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"Kids do spread COVID. We have to protect our children and stop kids running around the community as much as possible."
He added there were was a large amount of community spread going on.
"We've had examples in the last couple of days of people leaving their home while in isolation, people coming to visit homes while that home is in isolation," Mr McLachlan said.
"Could I beg and ask people to stop moving between communities and houses. I know it's going to be tough, but please stay at home everyone."
The vast majority of the cases we've identified in the last 24 hours and in fact the last week have been infectious in the community, sometimes for two, three or four days."
In the past week, nearly 50 per cent of the Dubbo community has received a COVID test, with 4500 tested in the 24 hours until 2pm on Monday.
In Orange, that testing number was at 324 and in Bathurst it was 171, Parkes was 191 and Mudgee was 832. These are all part of more than 9500 tests taken across Western NSW.
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