Victoria records 80 new COVID-19 cases as emergency department listed as exposure site - The Age

Victoria has recorded 80 new local COVID-19 cases as health authorities declared an emergency department in Melbourne’s south-east a tier-1 exposure site after a positive case visited the waiting area at the weekend.

Of Thursday’s new locally acquired cases, 39 were in quarantine for their entire infectious period.

The locked-down Shepparton High Street. Credit:Joe Armao

The cases were recorded from more than 56,200 tests.

Sixty-seven are linked to the current COVID-19 outbreaks, and authorities are investigating the acquisition source for the remaining 13 cases. Victoria recorded no new cases in its hotel quarantine in the past 24 hours.

Thursday’s figures come after the state’s health authorities identified several new exposure sites late on Wednesday night, including Monash Medical Centre Emergency Department in Clayton.

A person with the virus was in the waiting area on Saturday afternoon, so authorities have asked that anyone who was there between 3.35pm and 6.30pm is required to get tested for COVID-19 and isolate for 14 days.

A close contact exposure site at Shepparton Marketplace’s food court has also been added to the state’s list, which now includes more than 800 sites. Several retail outlets in the area were also declared casual contact exposure sites, including Big W at Shepparton Marketplace, a post office at Shepparton south, and a bakery.

Shepparton residents have been struggling to source groceries, baby formula, nappies and medicine, and residents not in mandatory isolation have said places to buy essential supplies are hard to find.

Some supermarkets have shut down because they are exposure sites or are losing staff to quarantine, while others have been forced to cut opening hours and scale back delivery and click-and-collect options.

Independent Shepparton MP Suzanna Sheed said: “The situation in Shepparton is a crisis and the mood is very anxious.”

“For a town that would normally pull together we simply don’t have the resources now. So we need the army, we need people driving trucks and distributing all the goods through the town.”

The Shepparton COVID-19 cluster grew to 66 cases on Wednesday, and about 40 Australian Defence Force personnel have been deployed to the city.

Meantime, Victoria’s deputy secretary of COVID-19 vaccinations Naomi Bromley said about 150,000 booked a vaccine appointment in the state on Wednesday, as eligibility for the Pfizer vaccine was expanded to include everyone between the ages of 16 and 29.

“We expected a big response but, probably, it was bigger than we expected,” she told 3AW’s breakfast program.

Tide may be turning on Victoria’s Delta spread

A number of key measures have trended down in recent days when it comes to Victoria’s COVID-19 outbreaks, suggesting to some experts that the spread of the Delta strain could be controlled.

University of South Australia epidemiologist Adrian Esterman said the rate of case growth over the past few weeks had been worrying, but that the government’s swift decision to lock down and the subsequent tightening of rules meant he was “cautiously optimistic” about the state’s outbreak.

However, Mikhail Prokopenko, director of the University of Sydney’s centre for complex systems, said Victoria’s number of mystery cases suggested it remained “on the brink”, despite the fall in daily infections.

Nearly 34,000 people had their vaccine doses in Victoria in the past 24 hours.

With Paul Sakkal and Melissa Cunningham

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2021-08-25 22:58:47Z
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