City of Ballarat development and growth director Natalie Robertson confirmed the city was "working with stakeholders to determine the short and long-term future of the Creswick Road site".

The Courier last month flagged Officeworks had lodged a planning application to extend its commercial operations over the large, council-constructed car park with what has been described as a $3.5 million "adjoining building".

The Creswick Road site was the last of the Grampians Health public COVID-19 testing facilities since the start of the pandemic. This followed screenings at Sebastopol Dental Clinic, Morsehead Park, Ballarat Senior Citizens Centre (Little Bridge Street), an Errard Street clinic, and Marty Busch Reserve.

The closure comes with declining demand for on-site COVID-19 testing, almost one year after the tents went up at Creswick Road.

Since it opened, 61,735 PCR tests were conducted at Creswick Road. At its maximum capacity the site boasted 35 team members, including 21 testing and triage staff on shifts, six traffic controllers on site and six traffic controllers off site with two security guards.

Tests at the facility hit a record 859 tests on Boxing Day last year with staff working from 8.30am extending through to 8.45pm to accommodate people, with a queue stretching 1.6-kilometres long and past Howitt Street.

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PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing remains available via UFS' COVID-19 clinic on the corner of Dana and Dawson streets, and 4Cyte's Skipton Street drive-through site. Grampians Health has made clear it would continue to offer masks and rapid antigen tests to vulnerable community groups.

This comes as fewer Australian households reported experiencing cold, flu or COVID-19 symptoms, or testing for COVID-19 in the past month, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released this week.

The ABS survey showed 36 per cent of households experienced cold-like symptoms in August, down from 42 per cent in July but one in five Australians continued to report the job situation of someone in their household had changed due to COVID-19 in the past month.

COVID-19 also impacted 15 per cent of Australian households preventing children to go to school or day care.

Ballarat recorded 219 new reported COVID-19 cases in the seven days to last Friday.

If you have tested positive on a RAT there is no need to confirm this with a PCR.

Close contacts are still required to undertake RATs for five out of the seven days contact period or to quarantine for seven days undertaking RATs on days one and six.

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