Why Victoria’s second wave could be worse than the first

It began with cases in Melbourne’s bungled hotel quarantine and slowly spread until an outbreak at public housing towers became Victoria’s worst cluster. Now experts are warning Melbourne’s second coronavirus wave could be a massive disaster.

Melbourne’s second wave spread into the housing towers of the city’s inner north. Picture: getty

Victoria’s second wave of coronavirus is posing a greater danger than the first, with experts warning Melbourne could face a London- or New York-scale disaster if the community does not hunker down.

While Australia’s first wave was confined largely to international travellers and their families, the renewed surge is spreading through Melbourne suburbs where it can be impossible to trace or contain.

Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, has warned the current situation is much harder to contain than the pandemic’s first peak in March. “This is a wave that is different to the first wave,” Prof Sutton said.

“Returning travellers; smaller families, fewer number of contacts, easier to identify; more likely to be engaged in testing because they could identify themselves as being at risk either as close contacts of an international traveller, or someone who had travelled internationally.

“This wave is trickier. It won’t be as easy to drive numbers down with the community transmission that is out there.”

At the height of the first wave Victoria recorded 111 new cases on March 28, but only 21 were deemed community transmission. By comparison, all Thursday’s 317 new cases caught COVID-19 while circulating in the community.

Epidemiologist Prof John Mathews, from the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health, said Melbourne’s spiralling daily cases were a wake-up call to governments and people living in the suburbs who had grown complacent.

He warned while Victoria was not yet facing a situation as grim as New York or London, any lapse in the renewed suppression efforts would “rapidly become a disaster”.

“In the first instance Australia was pretty well situated because the cases were coming either in by plane or off cruise ships. It was relatively easier when they were the only two sources,” Prof Mathews said.

“Victoria is now in a situation where we hope things will come back under control, but clearly there are a lot of the cases where they don’t know how people got infected. There are a lot of cases out there and we need to wait until next week to see whether the numbers start to go down again.”

One of the biggest issues faced by New York, London and other cities has been the loss of contact tracing, which becomes impossible under extreme case loads.

WATCH THE CLUSTERS THAT FORCED US BACK INTO LOCKDOWN GROW.

With thanks to Daniel Klein and Juliette O’Brien. To see more of their work on our corona cases go to: covid19data.com.au

virus clusters in Melbourne animated.

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