Community groups and Garran Primary School representatives were notified on Thursday the site was being considered.

ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith announced on Friday that it would be one of new three centres to open. West Belconnen Child and Family Centre would be a new walk-in centre, and the government was looking for a site for another drive-through facility in south Canberra. The drive through facility location would likely be revealed next week.

It's understood the Garran testing centre will be both a drive-through and walk-in clinic.

The pop-up emergency department - completed in May - was designed to deal with an influx of coronavirus patients and has sat idle since.

The West Belconnen centre will operate from 9.30am to 5pm Monday to Friday and begin this Monday.

"Canberrans are being reminded not to present for testing unless you are eligible. Testing is only available for people with COVID-19 symptoms or people who have been told by a public health official to get tested," the government said in a statement.

It comes as Canberrans have rushed to get tested for coronavirus.

Testing clinics across Canberra have had a spike in demand following from the outbreak of new coronavirus cases in Victoria which led to a second lockdown for residents in Melbourne and new reported cases in the ACT.

One testing clinic reported it had seen double the number of people show up for coronavirus testing in just one day.

Meanwhile, long lines of cars were seen outside the drive-through testing clinic at EPIC on Thursday.

The main laboratory processing tests in Canberra will also have its capacity doubled, allowing the territory to complete hundreds more tests a day.

READ MORE:

Health officials are working to confirm a new public testing site and whether it will allow for drive-through or walk-in testing.

"We acknowledge that the wait times for testing can be lengthy at certain periods in the day," Chief Minister Andrew Barr said.

Mel Deery, a GP at the YourGP@Crace clinic which carries out COVID-19 tests, said there had been a large increase in the number of tests since Monday.

On a normal day, the Gungahlin clinic would normally see as many as 50 people present for testing but more than 100 came through on Thursday.

Dr Deery said it was likely the spike in people coming through for testing would continue for several days or even weeks. "There's been a lot of people coming through to check symptoms, there's been quite a few who have travelled back from Melbourne and some have been concerned because they've been in the vicinity of areas where known cases have been," she said. "We're going to increase staff capacity to make sure people can come in to get tested."

An ACT Health spokeswoman said ACT Pathology was experiencing high levels of demand due to testing.

"We are expecting this demand to increase further as more Canberrans come forward for testing," the spokeswoman said.

Dr Deery said there had been an influx of people presenting to the clinic who had no coronavirus symptoms but had been in the same areas of Canberra where known cases had frequented.

"There's been a lot of anxiety, and with good reason, but if people don't have symptoms, we can't test them," she said.

ACT chief health officer Kerryn Coleman said people who had visited public locations that were identified as places positive cases had been to did not need to get tested unless they had symptoms.

The Lakeview Medical Practice in Tuggeranong also said they had seen a spike in recent days, coinciding with news of the Melbourne lockdown and border closures between Victoria and NSW.

Chief executive of Winnunga Nimmityjah Julie Tongs said the service had experienced an increase of calls as to whether patients were able to come in and be tested.