Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

I don't have the list of the initial testing. My understanding of what occurred at that site is that there was a progressive testing of positives over a period of time. That is a function of COVID-19; different people incubate at different times. So there has been a progressive growth in the number of positives in both staff and residents, purely because of the function of the virus. People don't incubate at the same rate. It may be that you're tested today and test negative, and two days later, which is the cycle under which we test—we test every 72 hours—you might not test positive to the second or third test, given that there's an incubation period of up to 14 days for COVID-19.