The latest case in Ballarat, the second in three days and third since Saturday, was confirmed by the Victorian Health Department on Thursday afternoon, taking the total number of people with the virus to 10.

Confirmed case numbers in Victoria swelled to more than 1000 people with a woman, aged in her 60s, becoming the state's sixth COVID-19 death.

Victoria has expanded its COVID-19 testing criteria with Health Minister Jenny Mikakos adding frontline workers including emergency services, homelessness support workers and workers in health care, residential care and disability care encouraged to be tested if they develop symptoms.

Immunosuppressed patients in hospital and those in high-risk settings, such as the military, boarding schools and prisons have also been added.

In a statement to media late Tuesday afternoon, a Ballarat Health Services spokesperson said BHS was confident it was confident "the scale of testing in our region will increase to meet the widening of this criteria" following funding announcements this week.

BHS has previously confirmed testing results turnaround was within 24 hours.

Ballarat's fever clinic for patients who met COVID-19 testing criteria moved from Drummond Street to BHS' public dental site in Sebastopol on Monday, after a health department scale back to emergency dental.

Expanded testing criteria comes after a staff member at Peter MacCallum tested positive on Wednesday.

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Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton confirmed more than 100 healthcare workers had been infected. He said the majority of them contracted the virus outside of work, through international travel or coming into contact with confirmed cases.

A Ballarat general ward nurse told The Courier earlier this week she feared more should be done to protect all nurses, whose job could not be done without close personal contact. BHS confirmed its sites were sticking to health department guidelines.

BHS stepped up its restrictions on Thursday on non-essential visitors to the Base Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Centre, and aged care residential sites.

Visitors are barred except in the following circumstances: one visitor will to accompany a pregnant women and children; special arrangements apply for palliative care and complex or elderly care in the Jim Gay and GEM wards; nurse managers can consider a visitor on compassionate grounds by prior arrangements; outpatients with an appointment can have a support person.

BHS chief medical officer Rosemary Aldrich said community support for hospital staff had been appreciated but reiterated the best support was to stay home and be kind.

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