Coronavirus testing mix-ups are very rare says Public Health director Mark Veitch.
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This comes after a six-year-old girl in Tasmania's North-West had be tested a second time for COVID-19 because a paperwork error meant her first test was not processed.
Coronavirus: All the latest updates on COVID-19 for Tasmania
Dr Veitch said such events were very rare but not unknown, with the state having conducted more than 25,000 tests to date.
"But there are also a lot of checks and balances built in to the capturing of tests as they go into the laboratory which makes paper mix-ups and specimen mix-ups very rare," he said.
Dr Veitch said a decline in testing numbers over recent weeks was disappointing.
"While its good to know there's been no cases diagnosed, it's much more reassuring to know that no cases have been diagnosed when there's been a high and sufficient level of testing done," he said.
He said the state had averaged between 300 and 400 tests a day over the past week but he would like to see 100 extra tests per day conducted each in the North, North-West and South.
"We do need to be having consistently 500 tests a day in Tasmania to provide that level of reassurance that we are not missing cases of coronavirus infection," Dr Veitch said.
In other news:
There have been 226 total cases of COVID-19 in Tasmania, with no new cases diagnosed for 10 days.
Dr Veitch said, as of Tuesday morning, there were eight active cases and 16 close contacts of those cases who would remain in quarantine until the end of May.
He said Tasmania had gone a long way toward eradicating coronavirus.
"We can't be sure and it would require sustained, reasonably high levels of testing for some weeks for us to be confident we had eradicated coronavirus in the state," Dr Veitch said.
"If it is eradicated that gives us a greater measure of confidence as we proceed through relaxation of measures.
"Public Health's goal is always to gather enough information to be able provide good advice so that as people begin to mix much more readily in the community they can do so without risking an explosive outbreak of an infection, like we see with influenza every year."
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