Victoria's COVID lockdown likely to be extended over rapid spread of the virus - ABC News

Victoria is strongly considering extending the seven-day lockdown, due to end at 11:59pm on Thursday, amid growing fears about rapid transmission in settings never seen before.

Key points:

• Health officials and government ministers held talks about extending the lockdown
• Health experts say the Indian variant is easily transmissible through the air in crowded indoor settings
• There are four or five cases where strangers had been infected by "fleeting contact"

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said on Tuesday night that the virus was moving "faster than any other strain we've dealt with."

"We're seeing transmissions in settings and circumstances we've never seen before," he said.

His comments came as a new positive case was identified in a Victorian who had travelled to New South Wales and back again, prompting a whole raft of new exposure sites.

For the first time, health officials have seen four or five cases where people were infected via casual contact with strangers.  

Victoria's COVID-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar said the interactions were "very fleeting contact" and quite different to what we're used to seeing.

Normally transmission in Australia has happened in workplaces, at big social events, or in the home.

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Not with this outbreak though.

Now people are getting sick just from breathing the same air as an infected person.   

"What we're seeing now clearly is people who are, they're brushing past each other in a small shop, they're going around a display home, they're looking at phones in a Telstra shop," Mr Weimar said.

"This is, relatively speaking, relatively fleeting contact. They don't know each others' names. And that's very different to where we've been before."

Melburnians had stopped wearing masks when the virus was circulating in the community.(

ABC News: Jarrod Fankhauser

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Why the more rapid spread?

So what's changed? It's the threat posed by the highly infectious COVID-19 Indian variant found in Melbourne.

The "Indian variant" B.1.617 was first detected in India last October and has since spread to more than 40 other countries, including Australia.

Experts have identified three subtypes: Cases in Victoria's latest cluster are infected with the first sublineage, B.1.617.1.

While there is still much to learn about the variants one thing is certain: it's much, much more infectious.

Dr Sumar Majumdar, an infectious diseases and public health expert at the Burnet Institute, said the Indian variant was able to spread more eaily through the air.     

Health experts are concerned about the spread of the virus in shops and markets, where people come into close contact.  (

ABC News: Peter Healy 

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And people who don't know each other are becoming infected. 

"They've gone into a space and then very quickly were breathing air from somebody else  … and got infected," he said.

"So the question is really, how good was the ventilation in these places." 

And of course no-one was wearing masks at the time — so that crucial layer of protection was missing.

Early on in the pandemic, we were told you were at risk of being infected by COVID after spending face-to-face time in a room with someone you knew.

But as evidence mounts about aerosol transmission of the virus, the settings of most risk have changed.

'Need that ring of steel'

The pandemic is worse today than it was a year ago and more variants are emerging on a regular basis, professor Raina McIntyre, from the Kirby Institute, said.

"So the stakes are much higher, and they (variants) will come in through quarantine," she told Afternoon Briefing.

"We really need that ring of steel and that includes addressing every possible preventable aspect to the virus leaking out and causing outbreaks."

Professor MacIntyre agreed that the biggest risk was breathing in contaminated air in poorly ventilated settings.  

"Small things like keeping your car window open if you are travelling with others, or opening a window at home even though it's cold, will make a big difference," she said.

Dr Majumdar said the World Health Organization had recently issued new advice about aerosol transmission — people should avoid the three C's: crowds, close-contact settings, and confined spaces.

"If you're in places where you think it's confined or poorly ventilated, it's not a safe setting," he said.

There are concerns some variants could be more resistant to vaccines.(

ABC News: Ryan Smith

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That advice will be especially important because it appears as though the serial interval — the time it takes between when a person becomes infected to then becoming infectious — is getting much shorter than the four days it used to be.

"I've noticed that the Victorian government have said it looks like a day, which is of great concern and suggests that of course, this lockdown was inevitable," said  professor Mary-Louise McLaws, an advisor to the WHO.

Dr Majumdar said it was more important than ever for everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

All of these concerns will be weighing heavily on the minds of Victoria's public health officials as they try to decide which is the safest path forward to end the outbreak.

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2021-06-01 14:13:16Z
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