Testing delays for results in Ballarat could mean government and health officials are making decisions based on data that could be up to a week old due to a lack of onsite laboratory testing in regional hospitals.

Medical Scientists Association of Victoria secretary Paul Elliott said testing lags had been a major problem the past three to four years for patients and doctors awaiting results across regional areas in the state.

Almost all hospital laboratory work in regional hospitals has been contracted out to a centralised system in Melbourne, which adds in a trucking delay for rapid testing.

Mr Elliott said now we were in a pandemic, we were getting caught out.

"Now it goes beyond a hospital's capacity - it has dismantled capacity - for rapid testing," Mr Elliott said. "Hospitals were not prepared."

Ballarat Health Services has referred The Courier's queries on COVID-19 testing to the Victorian Health Department. In a media statement issued Tuesday evening, BHS wrote current turnaround for testing was 24 hours.

A spokesperson for the Victorian government said the time it takes to complete a test was improving, due to increasing capacity, but results generally took at least 24 hours after arriving at the laboratory to confirm a positive case.

The government has expanded its coronavirus testing to nine public laboratories and two major private providers with a third to begin testing this week.

More than 45,000 Victorians have been tested using a pathology test developed by Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory.

As of Monday afternoon, Ballarat's confirmed coronavirus cases remained steady for a second consecutive day at eight people infected. The total number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in Victoria was 821 - up 56 from Sunday. New figures will be released on Tuesday afternoon.

BHS acute operations executive director Ben Kelly told The Courier numbers presenting for COVID-19 testing at the hospital's fever clinic had been slightly down at the weekend.

The clinic was also moving from Drummond Street to the BHS public dental site in Sebastopol to be fully operational from Monday morning.

The Courier understands there was no onsite coronavirus testing in hospitals in regional Victoria, aside from a laboratory in Geelong.

Mr Elliott said it was vital the government move fast to mobilise hospital laboratories and change this.

"Every day we do get numbers thrown at us by the governement - and that's important in how we respond," Mr Elliott said.

"The reality is we have got a structural problem. This is data relied on by the government and senior health officials to make their next response.

"The risk is, we believe in part, is that data could be old from gathering in regional Victoria...Significantly in parts, it could be a week old."

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