The chief executive of the Western NSW Local Health District has said he doesn't "think it really matters" where the COVID-positive person who visited two Orange eateries came from.
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Addressing questions on Tuesday afternoon, Scott McLachlan also apologised to businesses, such as Byng Street Café owner Jeremy Norris, for information regarding venues of COVID concern being posted to social media before notifying those from the business.
"Our teams are working 24/7 to do the contact tracing, the locations of concern and to make sure that's publicly available," he said.
"We know some of those pieces of information aren't being communicated as quickly as we'd like to. We apologise for that.
"We will endeavour to make sure those locations of concern particularly to the owners of those businesses and services are notified before going public."
He added that it wasn't ideal for staff to find out via platforms like Facebook.
"Our contact tracing teams are working feverishly to make sure we contact everyone as quickly as possible," he added.
"Those contact tracing conversations can sometimes go for four, five or six hours so they are quite complex and we will continue to do that as quickly as possible."
When asked again for information on where the COVID-positive person who visited the Byng Street Café and Village Bakehouse came from, Mr McLachlan said: "I don't think it really matters where they came from.
"We know that they visited Orange in a couple of locations. The contact tracing team have obviously identified that they were in Orange at those times and it's time for everyone to very vigilant."
A total of 18 new cases were found in Western NSW until 8pm on Monday, with one more each in Narromine and Gilgandra coming in overnight.
This now brings the total number up to 116.
Mr McLachlan said that of these, around two thirds are Aboriginal and about 40 per cent were aged between 10 and 19 years old.
"This is our time to stay still," he said.
"There has been some pleasing impact in the last 24 and 48 hours. The streets in Dubbo and a lot of communities are bare for the vast majority of time."
Five teams from the Australian Defence Force also arrived in Dubbo on Tuesday to aid with vaccinations.
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