Communicable diseases

On this page

• Notifiable conditions
• Information for Residential Aged Care Facilities
• Information for childcare and schools

Notifiable conditions

Our team is responsible for the management of 81 notifiable medical conditions, including working with communities to ensure a quick response to outbreaks.

Medical practitioners who reasonably believe that a patient has, or may have, a notifiable condition or has, or may have, died with a notifiable condition must notify as follows:

• Urgent conditions require notification to the Victorian Health Department by telephone on 1300 651 160 (24/7) upon initial diagnosis or clinical suspicion (presumptive or confirmed) as soon as practicable and within 24 hours.
• Routine conditions require written notification to the Victorian Health Department upon initial diagnosis or clinical suspicion (presumptive or confirmed) within five days using either the secure online notification forms or the downloadable forms, available here.

Guidelines and advice to health professionals about infectious diseases can be found here.

Information for Residential Aged Care Facilities

All outbreaks of COVID-19 within residential care facilities should be notified to the Victorian Department of Health or Local Public Health Unit.

An outbreak in a residential care facility is defined as two or more residents testing positive within a 72-hour period.

Outbreaks of infectious disease such as respiratory illness (e.g. influenza, RSV, COVID-19) or food-borne and water-borne outbreaks (i.e. gastroenteritis) within residential care facilities should be reported to Department of Health, especially if risks related to multiple cases are identified or cases or exposed persons are at high risk of serious disease.

Notification of food-borne illness or water-borne illness in 2 or more related cases must be made within 24 hours

To notify the Department of Health telephone 1300 651 160. Further information can be found here.

How we support you

Our team works with Residential Aged Care Facilities to support them through disease outbreaks.

The most common outbreaks we see are respiratory and gastroenteritis, with less common outbreaks of food or waterborne illness, pertussis or a resident with a Carbapenemase Producing Organism (CPO) isolated. We also see Legionella cases.

In an outbreak we may require you to undertake any or all of the following as part of disease management:

• Conduct contact tracing activities
• Provide staff vaccination history
• Faecal sampling
• Arrange additional cleaning
• Transmission based precautions
• Communications to staff or families
• Liaise with other authorities when required
• Other public health actions, as necessary.