Grant McArthur: Small rise in cases may be the best thing for Victoria

It may sound perverse, but a small rise in case numbers in the next 24 hours may be the best thing that could happen for the state.

Health investigators rightly have a strong fear of the unknown concerning Victoria’s latest COVID-19 cases.

So much hinges on finding the missing link - or links - between the four cases confirmed on Monday and wherever the virus came from.

At the moment there is an assumption the cases are somehow linked to a Wollert man who returned to Victoria on May 4 after unknowingly being infected while in South Australian hotel quarantine.

But without evidence it is far too dangerous to rely on assumptions, so contact tracers must work around the clock, even if they have few leads to follow.

Hours of interviews with the four relatives confirmed with COVID-19 on Monday failed to identify any overlap in their movements with those of the Wollert man.

Contact tracers wrongly listing a supermarket exposure site. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

And the number of days which have passed between his return to Victoria and their infections means there are almost certainly one or more people who would have carried the virus between them.

It may sound perverse, but a small rise in case numbers in the next 24 hours may be the best thing that could happen for the state.

It would give more leads to follow, potentially exposing the missing link if a case could be confirmed who had visited a Woolworths in Epping North or another exposure site.

That would also mean having to close off any other places an increasing number of infectious people had visited, but at least contact tracers would know where to focus attention.

Of course, if no further cases emerge in the next 24-48 hours it could also be a good thing - provided genetic testing can do what tracing cannot, and confirm a link between the latest cases and the Wollert-SA hotel quarantine case.

Regardless of how likely a genetic match is, having to rely on those results to come back favourably is an assumption too dangerous to even think about.