Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has hinted that the decision to ease the state’s lockdown won’t just be based on local case numbers.
Three hospitals have been forced into lockdown as authorities refuse to rule out an extension to Victoria’s five-day circuit breaker shutdown.
Psychiatric units at The Alfred hospital, Broadmeadows Hospital and the Northern Hospital in Epping went into lockdown after a female employee returned a “weak positive” for coronavirus.
The woman and her three-year-old child, who has also tested positive, attended a family event on a Sydney Road, Coburg, with an infected hotel quarantine worker.
The woman subsequently returned both negative and weak positive results but was ultimately deemed a positive case out of caution.
The case was the state’s only new locally acquired case on Monday, and one new case inside hotel quarantine took Victoria’s active case count to 21.
Daniel Andrews said while the numbers were positive, it was too soon to say whether restrictions would be eased on Wednesday night as planned. “However, I’ve never been one to try to make bold predictions, we just have to take this one hour at a time, one day at a time,” the Premier said.
“But I think this is a promising start, these last three days, and I am proud of all Victorians for the hard work that they’ve put in.”
Mr Andrews said he reserved the right to impose further restrictions based on public health advice.
“You have to assume, just like epidemiologists, public health experts and political leaders across the globe, you have to assume there are more cases out there than you know about because if you assume otherwise, and you are proven wrong, then there is no going back,” he said.
“There is no do over, you don’t get to go well, I just get to rewind these few weeks and make the decision officials told me to make, that I refuse to make.”
The Premier refused to detail the public health advice that would ease restrictions, but said it wasn’t just about case numbers.
“The individual circumstances of each case have always been very important to us and they become even more important in circumstances like this,” he said.
Chief health officer Brett Sutton said authorities were concerned about the infectiousness of the British strain, that was at least 34 per cent more infectious than the original strain.
“So there is an absolute need for a precautionary approach in that regard,” he said.
Both Mr Andrews and Prof Sutton said it was too soon to say whether or not students would be free to return to school this week.
Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien said the lockdown made no sense if the government was confident in its contact tracing scheme.
“Victorians are sick and tired of the spin, sick and tired of being lied to, and sick and tired of knee jerk reactions,” he said.
PERTH DECLARED GREEN ZONE
Perth has been declared a green zone according to Victoria’s traffic light permit system.
The Department of Health updated its classification on Monday night for Perth, Peel and the south-west region of Western Australia.
The region had been under a five-day snap lockdown, which was lifted on February 5.
SUTTON DEFENDS SNAP LOCKDOWN
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the snap lockdown was not an over-reaction.
“Nobody wants this, nobody wants to go through this if it’s not required,” he said on ABC radio on Monday night.
“The alternative is what we’re needing to avoid, the alternative of out of control transmission, which would lead to restrictions and cases that persist for weeks and weeks if not months. So we have to be precautionary and we have to stamp it out. We’ve seen reactions that could have been called over-reactions across Australia and we don’t know how it might have gone had the reactions not occurred.”
Professor Sutton said it was “looking good” in terms of bringing the Holiday Inn outbreak to a halt.
But he said there was a “reasonable likelihood” of further cases.
“We’re hoping that all of those occur in people that have already been identified, already been quarantined and would not generate any further exposure sites, I think that’s the critical thing that we don’t want new cases to emerge and we hear that they’ve been to multiple public areas or gatherings.”
He said the reason Victoria’s public health team recommended putting the state into lockdown was because of the spread of the UK variant and how fast it was moving.
He said it was difficult to compare the response to New South Wales’ handling of the virus because their situation was different.
“They haven’t had a cluster emerge like this, they haven’t had a variant of concern out in the community,” he said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMimwFodHRwczovL3d3dy5oZXJhbGRzdW4uY29tLmF1L2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzL3JvbGxpbmctY292ZXJhZ2UtZGFuaWVsLWFuZHJld3MtaGludHMtYXQtd2hhdHMtbmVlZGVkLXRvLWVhc2UtbG9ja2Rvd24vbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9lMjk3ZmFlZGQ0YjcyZDgxMWU1NWYwYzQxM2JhZDc5YtIBnwFodHRwczovL3d3dy5oZXJhbGRzdW4uY29tLmF1L2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzL3JvbGxpbmctY292ZXJhZ2UtZGFuaWVsLWFuZHJld3MtaGludHMtYXQtd2hhdHMtbmVlZGVkLXRvLWVhc2UtbG9ja2Rvd24vbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9lMjk3ZmFlZGQ0YjcyZDgxMWU1NWYwYzQxM2JhZDc5Yj9hbXA?oc=5
2021-02-15 19:24:59Z
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