Victoria COVID LIVE updates: 5 new local cases; Hunt for origins of Melbourne Delta variant outbreak; lockdown continues as police stop travel to regions - The Age

We have made our live blog of the coronavirus pandemic free for all readers. Please consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.

Key posts

Health Minister Martin Foley is providing an update on Victoria’s coronavirus situation alongside the Chief Health Officer and infectious diseases expert, Professor Sharon Lewin from the Doherty Institute.

You might remember at yesterday’s press conference Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would establish a digital link to Medicare accounts when people had been vaccinated, partly to allow free travel between states.

Asked about this, Health Minister Martin Foley gave a cool response saying any change to rules around borders would be based on health advice and that current vaccination levels were “nowhere near” the numbers required to allow that.

We are hopping around a little bit at the podium. Professor Lewin has come back to answer two important questions about the Delta variant flare-up.

If it’s a hotel quarantine breach, will that have occurred in Victoria or somewhere else?

Professor Lewin said that could not be known as opposed to the Kappa cluster which had a “clear match” with South Australian quarantine.

Matt Golding Saturday cartoons Credit:Matt Golding

Could the Delta variant be on the loose somewhere else in the country undetected?

“That is actually really unlikely because ... about 20 per cent of people will get severe symptoms and of them, some will require hospitalisation,” she said.

“It would be really unlikely it could be circulating for an extended period of time without it being admitted into hospitals.”

There’s been some discussion also about the quarantining arrangements for diplomats.

Our reporter Paul Sakkal asked how those people are handled in terms of quarantine and testing.

Professor Brett Sutton said rules for those people were a commonwealth responsibility.

“To the extent that we can enforce it, we recommend testing as we would for anyone early in their quarantine phase, and right at the end of the quarantine phase before they release from quarantine,” he said.

COVID-19 logistics chief Jeroen Weimar has give some key statistics on the outbreak.

There are now 69 active cases of coronavirus linked to the current community clusters
The Delta cluster now counts nine active cases
339 primary close contacts at North Melbourne Primary School have been tested and 82 per cent have returned negative test results
600 primary close contacts identified early in this outbreak have cleared their 13-day tests
Another 800 primary close contacts are taking day 13 tests today
150 exposure sites were expected to drop off the official list as those tests were completed

Mr Weimar said one of today’s new cases is a worker at a large CBD construction site run by major builder Probuild.

He could not name the site but said there were 170 close contacts identified with that site.

“The construction industry has worked incredibly hard over the last place really strong workplace controls workplace recording systems,” he said.

“That site is now closed and we’ll continue to work with them over the coming days.”

Mr Weimar was also asked whether there was any hint of where the pair of unlinked cases had contracted the virus.

“We have now a total of seven positive cases, on a number of different days, who have been in and out of Craigieburn shopping centre and individual stores within there,” he said.

“That is a leading line of our investigation at the moment. We’re working closely to get his exact movements and exactly overlaps with other positive cases, but that is the lead hypothesis at this point in time.”

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton added that he did not think it was likely the virus was picked up from a surface at the shopping centre.

“It is a lesson that you should have awareness of all of those settings, all of the exposure sites that are listed as current, because if you’re attending there regularly or if you’ve been there at a time that’s listed, it’s really important to get tested,” he said.

The Doherty Institute’s Sharon Lewin is talking through the process of trying to find the match for the new Delta outbreak which has concerned authorities.

Professor Lewin said the most likely source of the Delta variant outbreak was the state’s hotel quarantine system.

Asked if there was a chance the family in West Melbourne had caught the virus in Jervis Bay on a trip to NSW, she said only “extensive testing in the Jervis Bay Area and no further case, so that’s happening right now”.

“My strong hypothesis is that it’s coming through a importation from overseas, through our quarantine hotels, that would be the most likely.”

Professor Lewin said the possibility of a quarantine leak could not be 100 per cent proven though because only about 70 to 80 per cent of cases were successfully sequenced.

“So there are 20 per cent of people who are positive and we do not have a genetic barcode for. So [a hotel quarantine breach] is my strongest hypothesis,” she said.

The Doherty Institute handles the genomic sequencing for every positive coronavirus case in Victoria.

Professor Lewin said that process means the institute can identify the sequence in about 80 per cent of positive cases and those are then matched against national and international databases.

“The first thing is about infectiousness. At the moment in Victoria we have two strains, the Kappa strain - which is the main strain - and ... the Delta strain,” she said.

“In the UK they compare a range of factors to the Alpha strain, the original valued.

“From the UK data we are getting very clear evidence that both the Kappa and the Delta strains are about 50 per cent more infectious. That is based on something called the attack rate; the number of positives over the number of people exposed, which is 8 per cent for Delta and 11 per cent for Kappa.”

She said the Delta variant also had a greater rate of hospitalisation in Britain than the Alpha variant.

We are aware that there are issues with audio on the livestream.

We are working on those technical issues and will keep bringing you live reporting of all the news from the media conference.

We apologise for any inconvenience that issue is causing.

Victoria’s vaccination blitz on aged care and disability workers will be extended a further day with paramedics to be added to priority list.

Health Minister Martin Foley said vaccinations prioritising for aged care and disability care workers will continue beyond its original finish date of Monday with demand still strong.

He said more than 10,000 workers were vaccinated in the blitz.

Another blitz will launch on Wednesday for Ambulance Victoria staff. That push will include priority access and run until Sunday, Mr Foley said.

Health Minister Martin Foley has opened the press conference describing the latest new cases.

He said three of the five new cases are primary close contacts of existing cases.

One case was a second child of a family, another was a contact of another known case and the third was a previously identified primary close contact “who works with a family member who tested positive in the first West Melbourne group”.

Two cases though, are unlinked.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said while the two unlinked cases did not have close contact with known infections they had visited the Craigieburn and Epping Plaza shopping centres.

CHO Brett Sutton gives the latest COVID-19 update.Credit:

“They were frequent attendees at both of those sites. We haven’t got a definitive crossover time with nine cases, but they did get tested, or at least one of them was prompted to get tested because they saw that we had concerns about those settings is potentially at risk for people who pass and have casual contact with others.

“Not to overemphasise these sites but ... it does become a challenge if people aren’t aware that there are primary close contact.”

Professor Sutton said there will be new exposure sites identified for the pair as they were not quarantining.

“You should look at all of the exposure sites that are listed and not just reflect on the specific times and days for those exposure sites,” he said.

“If you’re a frequent attendee of some of those, shopping centres in particular ... and you don’t know the exact times and dates that you might have been there ... you should you should think about getting tested and certainly if you’re symptomatic.”

You hear all the time about an athlete who has made the biggest sacrifice of their career to reach an Olympic Games.

How many have found a COVID-safe haven in recent months to live and train? Or immersed themselves in some sort of biosecurity bubble, so as not to catch the virus and waste five years of preparing for the biggest sporting competition on the planet?

Well, an Australian Olympian stood in a drive-thru testing clinic in Melbourne for 12 hours this week because she just wants to help.

Australian shooter Elena Galiabovitch works at the South Melbourne drive-through COVID clinic.Credit:Eddie Jim

Elena Galiabovitch, a member of Australia’s shooting team, was swabbing nervy and agitated drivers who just wanted to get tested and get home. Galiabovitch wants to get to the Olympic Games, but not at the expense of protecting her community first.

She has spent the past year on Melbourne’s front line fighting the pandemic, which has also cast an almighty black cloud over the Olympics. Even with the rescheduled competition less than two months away, Galiabovitch still hasn’t stopped working casual shifts.

The 31-year-old doctor, who is studying for a Masters degree to become a urological surgeon, put her profession on the back-burner early last year to concentrate on her preparations for Tokyo. That was until COVID infiltrated Australia and the Olympic Games were postponed until 2021.