BATHURST has had its fourth detection of COVID fragments in the city's sewage in two weeks, but the city remains without an active case.
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The Western NSW Local Health District said a sewage sample taken on Wednesday, August 18 was found to have the fragments in it.
It followed COVID being found in samples taken on Monday, August 16, Wednesday, August 11 and Monday, August 9.
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"The sewage in Bathurst is tested three times a week and it's something that will continue into the future," health district CEO Scott McLachlan said.
The health district has also announced dates in early September for a health district and Australian Defence Force pop-up COVID vaccination clinic in Bathurst.
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The first of the pop-up clinics will be set up in West Dubbo this weekend and Bathurst will get its turn from September 6 to 10.
The health district said they will be walk-in clinics, with no bookings required, and details of specific venues, times, which vaccines and eligibility will be announced in the days prior to each clinic.
There were 27 new cases of COVID across the health district to 8pm on Thursday: 21 in Dubbo, two in Bourke, two in Gilgandra and two in Goodooga.
That brought to 194 the number of cases in the district.
Mr McLachlan said four patients were in hospital, all in Dubbo, and one was in intensive care and being ventilated.
"We have got an extensive network of intensive care beds across Dubbo, Orange and Bathurst hospitals," he said.
"We've been doing a lot of planning and work over the last 12 months to make sure that we can scale that up to nearly threefold the numbers of beds that we've got at the moment.
"So we're confident that we can manage a lot of the needs of COVID patients in the region if cases do continue to increase.
"We know that fewer and fewer people need intensive care if they're vaccinated."
Bathurst's drive-through testing clinic at Mount Panorama continues to operate seven days from 8am to 4pm.
As well as the regular testing in Bathurst, Mr McLachlan said sewage testing was starting at Oberon.
