There are no longer any Armidale COVID-19 exposure sites Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall has announced.
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On Sunday Mr Marshall had identified three places of concern; the Xplorer train, which arrived in Armidale on July 29; Armidale Secondary College and Dominos Pizza East Armidale.
On Monday Mr Marshall advised The Armidale Express there were only four passengers on the train, and the other three people have had a negative COVID-19 test result and are in isolation.
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NSW Health contact tracing teams have identified and notified all the close contact individuals who have attended sites of possible exposure. All the people who visited Dominos and the school at the relevant times have been contacted and are in isolation.
Mr Marshall said there were no other venues of concern at this stage, but assured the community he would continue to provide updates if that changed.
"The next 24 hours will be the most crucial, as we await the test results of the close contacts, which will determine what happens next," he said.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard announced on Saturday morning that Armidale had recorded two confirmed COVID-19 cases.
A third case was announced on Sunday morning from the same household as the first two cases.
It is believed members of the affected household had not socialised actively since July 29, resulting in a limited number of exposure sites.
NSW Health contact tracing teams make sure that all venues that may have been exposed during the infectious time of a positive case are identified Mr Marshall said.
"They then go through a thorough process of actually linking up with the venue and going through all of the material to try and narrow down exactly who are close contacts, who are casual contacts and who are not contacts at all," he said.
"In some venues, for example schools or workplaces (such as Armidale Secondary College and Dominos Pizza), it's quite easy to identify precisely the people who have actually been exposed."
The venues are not listed on the NSW Health website if there are no additional community contacts.
"This is why there are sites listed in Tamworth, but not Armidale," Mr Marshall said.
Mr Marshall congratulated the community for its response to the Public Health Order and said more than 1,000 people per day were being tested. However, a spokesperson for Hunter New England Health said official testing numbers would not be released until tomorrow.
An additional Laverty Pathology walk-in testing site opened in Uralla on Monday at 33 Bridge St, operating from 8am to 2pm Monday to Friday. No appointment is necessary.
It comes as public health officials identified five Tamworth locations as exposure sites, including the Inland Cafe, the Tudor Hotel, Gloria Jeans Coffee, Super Vape Store Tamworth, and Ampol Roadhouse at Hillvue on Goonoo Goonoo Road.
Tamworth will go into a snap seven-day lockdown from 5pm Monday, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed.
Ms Berejiklian said there are no positive cases identified in the Tamworth region yet, but a person from Newcastle had travelled to the city, so the lockdown would be in place as a precaution.
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