Business leaders and epidemiologists have called for stronger enforcement of QR code procedures to keep Victoria safe as fears of looming restrictions grow.
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Victoria is teetering on the edge of tougher restrictions after more than 10 new cases of COVID-19 were found on Wednesday.
The surge in new cases comes after a group of three removalists travelled from Sydney, through Melbourne, on their way to Adelaide, stopping in Ballan.
The westbound Western Freeway Mobil service station and attached McDonald's were declared exposure sites after the removalists stopped to eat and shower.
Commerce Ballarat chief executive Jodie Gillett said the close call reaffirmed the importance of the QR code check-in system to Victoria's delicate set of restrictions.
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"I completely understand. Sometimes you're popping into three or four places, you're only going to be there for a minute, it feels that way, but it takes a couple seconds and when this situation happens suddenly, we all realise how important it is," she said.
"For our businesses, many of them still are working under quite tight restrictions and that's incredibly difficult. If we want our businesses to stay open, if we don't want to go into another lockdown, if we want to have the quality of life, then we need to continue to follow the rules and every day, not just sometimes."
Ms Gillett said it was the responsibility of both businesses and the general public to ensure everyone was doing the right thing.
"It's on every business to do the right thing, it's not on some businesses and the majority are certainly doing what they need to do but there are some out there who are not," she said.
"It's key that we're checking to make sure that people are using the QR codes, we're checking to make sure that we are doing the right amount of numbers and wearing masks when we're dealing with the public."
The calls come after it was revealed less than 30 people had signed in at each site during the two-hour exposure period.
Victoria's COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said on Tuesday the state's contact tracing team was reviewing footage to work out just how many people could be affected.
"We've got around 24 coming out of the McDonald's and 28 coming out of the Mobil site. The work we're doing now is looking at CCTV of those individuals and who they interacted with," he said.
"They were there for two hours. If I sit back and do the math, I suspect there were more than 25 people that went to that McDonald's over a two-hour window and probably more than 20-odd people that went to that servo over that two-hour period.
"The team are going to follow the CCTV evidence and see exactly what that looks like."
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Mobil Ballan West manager Pauline Heywood said while the service station had QR codes and manual registers available, some people just refused to check-in.
"They don't want to play by the rules and they do it to Macca's as well. Macca's ask them and they just look at them like they've got two heads," she said.
"It's pretty embarrassing and we're only doing the job that we're asked to do. All we're doing is trying to comply with what the health department has asked us to do.
"This morning has been great, most people that have come in have had masks and signed or scanned in. The ones that don't have a mask, we just give them one... It's not the way we want to do it, but we just want everyone to feel safe with what's gone on."
Australian National University infectious diseases Professor Peter Collignon said the entire country needed to be tougher on contact tracing measures until at least spring.
"This is a danger period. In my view, we need to have restrictions in place to minimise the chance that if it's there, because you often don't know it for four or five days, that we've decreased the number of people it may have spread to," he said.
"Another important part of that is contact tracing which is why QR codes are so essential. My view is we need to enforce QR codes that if you don't have a QR code, you don't get in.
"I think we need to do that for the next few months all over Australia, be hard-nosed about it. It's different, I guess, if you're getting a takeaway coffee from outside, I wouldn't be as strong there, but we know the risky place where every time there's outbreaks there, they're much more intertwined."
Swinburne University epidemiologist and health services researcher Professor Richard Osborne said better communication was needed across different parts of the country.
"It's disappointing and it's frustrating, but it is understandable... We can't expect people in the bush to really be comfortable with a message which is designed for the top end of town in the big cities and vice versa," he said.
"People in the bush need to hear messages from people like themselves saying how important this is because that's far more meaningful to them.
"So it is understandable that people aren't always using the app and they can't always see how this could directly affect them because it hasn't been explained to them how if they did accidentally get infected from someone, then they as an individual could be the cause of enormous damage, enormous carnage across communities."
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