The State Government is hoping the expanded criteria, including anyone who has had a fever or breathing symptoms, will give them a better indication of the real rate of infection in the community, particularly those who may have picked up the virus through community transmission rather than through overseas travel, a key criteria up until now.

Ballarat's COVID-19 count remains at 10, where it has been for almost two weeks.

Neither Ballarat Health Services, nor the Department of Health and Human Services, have released any detail on the condition of Ballarat's 10 patients. It is not known if their cases are still active or not.

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said he hoped the broader testing criteria will capture any undetected cases in the community and "drive cases down to zero".

"There is the potential to walk back the most significant restrictions if we can drive numbers right down," he said.

So far the confirmed cases have looked good for Ballarat with no new cases reported in almost two weeks, in which time hundreds of people have been tested.

But Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has warned against complacency or easing restrictions too soon.

"If we have 200 people walking around the community that could be 80,000 people in one month," Ms Mikakos said.

"We are of course planning about what the timing and what the lifting of restrictions might look like, but now's not the time to be doing that."

Staff at the new testing facility located at the Lucas Community Hub, operating for the first time on Tuesday said phones were ringing constantly from 10am as residents called attempting to book tests and seeing if they qualified to be tested.

READ MORE: New COVID-19 testing clinic established in Lucas

On day one only 12 applicants were deemed necessary to be tested for COVID-19

Operations manager at Primary Care with UFS Danielle Trezise told The Courier she was pleased with how the first day went in Lucas and is confident the facility will be able to accommodate it's maximum of 128 tests per day in the near future.

"Everything went really well," she said.

"Having the small number of tests take place was good for our doctors and nurses. I'm very confident in this facility's ability to test more people efficiently going forward."

Ms Trezise reiterated the fact the clinic is appointment only, urging those who believe they need to be tested to call 43111571 and not to simply turn up at the facility.

These numbers add to the already huge number of tests that have taken place at Ballarat Health Services' clinics.

A BHS spokesperson told The Courier well over 1,500 individuals had been triaged in the past month and a large proportion of those patients had also been tested for COVID-19.

"Thanks to the dedication and hard work of our COVID screening and assessment staff, we have triaged over 1500 people and tested close to a thousand since we first opened almost a month ago," a BHS spokesperson said in a statement.

"There was a decline in the number of calls over the Easter break, with only a dozen or so people tested every day."