Fruit shop in Broadmeadows emerges as new exposure site
A fruit shop in Broadmeadows has been added to Victoria’s growing list of exposure sites. It comes as Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the snap lockdown was not an over-reaction.
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A fruit shop in Broadmeadows has been added to Victoria’s growing list of exposure sites.
The Department of Health said a positive case visited Sacca’s Fruit World between 12.30pm and 1.15pm on Tuesday Februrary 9.
This story was updated on Monday, 15 February. For the latest news updates on COVID and lockdown from Tuesday, 16 February, click here.
Anyone who visited the shop in between those times must isolate, get tested and remain isolated for 14 days.
It comes as Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the snap lockdown was not an over-reaction.
“Nobody wants this, nobody wants to go through this if it’s not required,” he said on ABC radio on Monday night.
“The alternative is what we’re needing to avoid, the alternative of out of control transmission, which would lead to restrictions and cases that persist for weeks and weeks if not months. So we have to be precautionary and we have to stamp it out. We’ve seen reactions that could have been called over-reactions across Australia and we don’t know how it might have gone had the reactions not occurred.”
Professor Sutton said it was “looking good” in terms of bringing the Holiday Inn outbreak to a halt.
But he said there was a “reasonable likelihood” of further cases.
“We’re hoping that all of those occur in people that have already been identified, already been quarantined and would not generate any further exposure sites, I think that’s the critical thing that we don’t want new cases to emerge and we hear that they’ve been to multiple public areas or gatherings.”
He said the reason Victoria’s public health team recommended putting the state into lockdown was because of the spread of the UK variant and how fast it was moving.
He said it was difficult to compare the response to New South Wales’ handling of the virus because their situation was different.
“They haven’t had a cluster emerge like this, they haven’t had a variant of concern out in the community,” he said.
CLOUD OVER RESTRICTIONS
Meanwhile, health authorities have not ruled out an extension of Victoria’s five-day snap lockdown, with the state recording just one new local case of coronavirus overnight.
A new case was also detected in hotel quarantine, with more than 25,000 Victorians tested on Sunday.
The state’s number of active cases remains unchanged, at 21. Seventeen cases are linked to the Holiday Inn cluster.
Three days into the return of stage four restrictions, Premier Daniel Andrews said he could not rule out an extension the snap lockdown.
“I know every Victorian on Monday morning wants to know whether this is going to finish on Wednesday night,” he said.
“I’m not in a position to be able to confirm that but I can say that thanks to the hard work of those Victorians who are coming forward and getting tested.
“I think we are well placed. However, I’ve never been one to try and make bold predictions.”
He said “things are going well” and acknowledged that the “challenging” and “painful” wait, but said authorities had to let the situation unfold.
“It’s safe to assume that we will wait as we always have to have the most contemporary picture, the most data and evidence as to what is going on out there,” he said.
“It’s best if I answer it this way, as soon as we can possibly give Victorians news one way or another, we will.”
FRANTIC SEARCH FOR 50 PASSENGERS
Health authorities revealed 50 travellers in Queensland who were potentially exposed to the highly contagious coronavirus strain at a Melbourne airport are still yet to be traced because they provided false or incorrect contact details.
When the Palaszczuk government slammed the borders closed to Victoria on Friday as the Holiday Inn cluster grew, Deputy Premier Steven Miles said authorities were particularly concerned about 1500 people in Queensland who had come into contact with the infection site at Tullamarine Airport.
This alarming number of potentially infected travellers needed to be traced by authorities, tested and isolated until it was certain there was no risk of community transmission in the Sunshine State.
This threat was eased on Saturday when it was announced all 1500 travellers had been traced and contacted, but it has now been revealed 50 were not successfully contacted because personal information provided for the flights was false.
“Initially, we reached out to the full list of people according to the contact details we received from flight manifests, as we normally do,” a Queensland Health spokesperson told NCA NewsWire on Monday afternoon.
“However, around 50 bounced back, likely due to incorrect contact details, which means we’re continuing to follow them up.”
Queensland announced on Friday it would close its borders to greater Melbourne from Saturday morning for 14 days after declaring 36 of the city’s local government areas hot spots.
QUEEN VIC MARKET UNDERGOES DEEP CLEAN
A deep clean is underway at Queen Victoria Market after it was revealed that a confirmed case attended the popular Melbourne market.
The infected person was there on Thursday, February 11, from 8.25 to 10.10am, visiting the fruit and vegetable section and the female toilets in section two.
They travelled to and from the market on the No.58 tram, getting on at the Bourke/William streets stop at 8.10am and getting off at the Queen Victoria Market/Peel Str stop just before 8.30am.
They took the same route later that morning, boarding the No.58 tram from Queen Victoria Market at 9.40am and disembarking 15 minutes later at the Bourke/William streets stop.
About 50 students from a Ballarat primary school and a number of staff have been forced into isolation after visiting the market during a school camp.
The year five and six students were on-site last Thursday as part of the camp — the same time the positive COVID-19 case visited the market.
A Catholic Education Ballarat spokeswoman said DHHS had instructed that all students and staff on the camp had been identified as primary close contacts, and were required to get tested immediately and quarantine for 14 days since the date of exposure.
A QVM spokeswoman confirmed the market was open on Sunday and will resume trading on Tuesday. The market is always shut on Mondays.
GLADYS’ BOLD CLAIM ABOUT VIC LOCKDOWN
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she wouldn’t have ordered a statewide lockdown if the Victorian coronavirus outbreak happened on her watch.
Asked on Monday if NSW would be in lockdown if an outbreak such as the current one in Victoria happened, Ms Berejiklian responded it wouldn’t be.
“It’s pretty clear during the pandemic that certain states have a way of doing things, and NSW has a way of doing things. I think the way we dealt with the northern beaches cluster is the way in which NSW tends to deal with these issues,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“We avoid a lockdown at all costs. We avoid closing our borders. We allow our citizens as much freedom as we can while managing the virus, and that’s just the way it is.”
She said she wasn’t going to claim “one way of doing things is better than another”, but the NSW approach had worked well for the state so far.
NSW has had its fair share of coronavirus outbreaks since the pandemic reached Australia, but during recent outbreaks the government hasn’t locked down the entire state.
During the recent outbreak in Sydney’s northern beaches area, centred around the suburb of Avalon, more than 150 people were infected with the virus. But while that local government area was put into lockdown, the rest of the state enjoyed various degrees of normalcy.
Meanwhile, Western Australia is extending its hard border with Victoria due to the growing Holiday Inn coronavirus outbreak.
WA’s border with Victoria was slammed shut for at least 72 hours on Friday night, meaning only exempt travellers are allowed into WA.
Victoria was reclassified as a “medium risk” state, with WA Premier Mark McGowan saying the outbreak, which triggered a snap five-day lockdown, was “very concerning,” and the hard border would last until the situation was brought under control.
On Monday, the Labor leader said it would remain until “at least” midnight Wednesday, with a decision on whether to extend further to be made then.
“The reason for that is Victoria will be in lockdown until at least that point in time,” Mr McGowan told reporters.
PSYCH WARDS IN LOCKDOWN AFTER CASE CONFIRMED
Monday’s new confirmed local infection was the case under investigation on Sunday, Premier Daniel Andrews said.
“She is asymptomatic — she was swabbed four times over the 13th and 14th of February, invariably returning both negative and weak positive results,” he said.
“Given her exposure and the variability of those results, a public health team have taken the most conservative approach and have deemed her a positive case.
“That, I think, is the appropriate way to go, to be as conservative as possible so that we can isolate her close contact, the secondary contacts, and test them.”
The woman attended a family function on Sydney Rd in Coburg, and had also worked in a psychiatric unit at The Alfred, along with psychiatric wards at the Northern Hospital in Broadmeadows.
Those wards have been locked down, with healthcare workers now in isolation.
“Even though this individual’s result is unclear, we are assuming, for the purposes of contact tracing and a rapid response, that she is in fact positive,” Mr Andrews said.
“Those services have had those wards locked down. Staff, all those that she may have come in contact with, they are all isolating and have been tested, and we will be able to update you both on testing performance and results for primary close contact and secondary close contacts over the hours and days to come.”
One of the “priority cases” being followed up by the health department is the three-year-old child, who attended the function in Coburg.
Testing commandander Jeroen Weimar said the child attended Glenroy Central Kinder and the Goodstart Early Learning Centre in Glenroy over three days last week.
“101 primary close contacts over those two kindergartens … have been isolating,” Mr Weimar said.
Meanwhile, Mr Weimar urged anyone in the Coburg and South Melbourne areas to go and get tested if experiencing symptoms, after “wastewater detections” in the local catchments.
“That advice continues for all Victorians,” he said.
NZ TRAVELLERS MUST GET TESTED, ISOLATE
The Premier confirmed a flight landed in Victoria from New Zealand on Sunday, with 152 travellers on board.
It comes as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered Auckland into a snap lockdown for the first time in nearly six months, after three coronavirus cases emerged in the community.
“We are following up on each of those passengers as we speak and have been throughout the evening,” Mr Andrews said.
“To determine firstly, are they still in Victoria, or have they travelled on somewhere else?”
If the travellers are still in Victoria, they are being asked to test and isolate until they receive a negative result.
HOW INFECTED CASE ROAMED FREE FOR A WEEK
Dozens of people exposed to the British coronavirus strain at a Coburg family gathering were allowed out in public after it took a week to confirm a “weak positive” test result.
As details of the latest cases raised concerns of a gap in the containment ring around the Holiday Inn outbreak, Health Minister Martin Foley said it was too soon to know whether Victoria’s five-day lockdown would be extended.
The Queen Victoria Market and two tram routes added to the list of exposure sites were late on Sunday.
Victoria — which has stopped taking international arrivals — also triggered a political storm after refusing to say if it will take the same number of arrivals it used to when lockdown ends.
After the first case was confirmed on February 7, the Holiday Inn outbreak on Sunday rose to 16 cases when the first non-household contacts were confirmed to have COVID-19.
Investigations have now concluded the latest cases — a three-year-old child and a woman — caught the highly infectious B117 variant at a private gathering in Sydney Road, Coburg on February 6.
Despite first examining the gathering a week ago when it was revealed a COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria worker had attended, contact tracers ruled it out as an exposure site when the woman tested negative on February 7 — meaning most of the 38 guests did not have to isolate.
It was only when another male attendee later tested positive investigators re-examined the woman’s negative test in more detail and found it was actually a “weak positive”.
Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton defended the week it took to identify the Coburg risk, saying there had been no reason to isolate guests based on the woman’s initial negative test.
“We do not have exposure sites for people who return negative tests — all we can do is remain alert to any other results that came through to find out how transmission may have occurred,” Prof Sutton said.
“The Coburg venue wasn’t in scope because of that negative test the day after the event took place.
“It was in getting another case out of that setting that we identified that transmission might have occurred there.”
Prof Sutton said false-positives and false negative COVID-19 test results were extremely rare.
Health Minister Martin Foley said while almost 1000 close primary contacts linked to the Holiday Inn cluster had been identified and contacted, it was too soon to measure the success of the snap statewide lockdown.
“It is too early to say whether we have been successful but the signs that show Victorians are doing the right thing, supporting each other and our test trace and isolate system is staying ahead of this,” Mr Foley said.
Deakin University chair of epidemiology Catherine Bennett said her main concern for the next 48 hours was the cases linked to the “spreader event” in Coburg.
“We will know in the next 48 hours how they are going in terms of the ring of contacts,” Prof Bennett said.
There are now 21 active coronavirus cases across Victoria.
The Queen Victoria Market and route 11 and 58 trams were added to the list of exposure sites. Elite Swimming in Pascoe Vale, Oak Park Sports and Aquatic Centre in Pascoe Vale, and Woolworths and Ferguson Plarre Bakehouse in Broadmeadows Central were also declared exposure sites.
NEBULISER PATIENT DEFENDS HIMSELF
The returned traveller who used a nebuliser, which is now at the centre of Victoria’s latest COVID-19 outbreak, says the government hasn’t “tried to get my side of the story”.
Speaking to 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, the man, who is in ICU in hospital fighting the virus, said was surprised no one had tried to “get the facts” from more than one source.
It comes after Premier Daniel Andrews at the weekend stood by the government’s claims the man didn’t declare the asthmatic device, which the traveller denies.
“At the end of the day I hope the government can reach out to a lot more people who have gone through the hotel quarantine program … and continue to improve this,” he said in a prerecorded message.
NARRE WARREN CHURCH ‘OBEYS GOD’, NOT COVID
A church in Melbourne’s southeast is under police investigation after 50 people attended a church service despite a statewide lockdown.
Footage circulating on social media shows worshippers gathered at Revival Christian Church in Narre Warren indoors without masks, singing and praying on Sunday morning.
Outside the church the leader told police “I guess the question is do I obey God, or do I obey man? Because I have chosen to obey God, I will continue to obey God, so the doors of my church will remain open.”
Read the full story here.
GIPPSLAND PUB BLASTS LOCKDOWN
A pub in Victoria’s east has blasted Premier Daniel Andrews five-day lockdown, saying local businesses are “dying here”.
The Metung Hotel sent out the tweet on Sunday afternoon, pleading with the government to “let East Gippsland open”.
“Dear Dan … Zero cases ever and we are just dying here 350kn (sic) from nearest case,” the post reads.
David Strange, who has owned the hotel for 16 years, said it was not about himself or his business, but “the people.”
“It’s those who earn living from the pub,” he said.
“The staff, the suppliers, the egg lady. When we’re shut, they don’t make an income.
“We’ve been through fires and lockdowns … East Gippsland hasn’t had a case ever since this whole thing started. He (the Premier) should let us open.”
Mr Strange, who employs about 43 staff, said many were “devastated” and once again left wondering if they would be able to pay their bills.
“Shutting down is a quick and easy solution, but it shouldn’t be – it should be a last resort,” he said.
“The whole toll is on people – people are suffering. That’s what it is.
“There are so many who rely on us and they’re the ones I really feel for.”
Mr Strange said he believed regional Victoria should be allowed to operate like it did when restrictions were eased after the second wave and only serve people from regional areas.
“I’m just disappointed that after a year we haven’t got a plan in place,” he said.
The hotel continues to state they would only serve locals and people not from Melbourne in order to keep their doors open.
Metung and surrounding areas were already doing it tough after the 2019-20 summer bushfires, which ravaged local towns, and relies on tourists over the warmer months to support businesses.
ANDREW BOLT: ‘TOUGH GUY’ DAN IS JUST A SHAM
If Premier Daniel Andrews is so good at fighting the coronavirus, why is Victoria so bad?
Shouldn’t voters judge this premier not on his A-grade spin but D-grade performance?
Andrews is popular for being the toughest premier, yet is the least effective.
No other state has had so many lockdowns — three now — or had its citizens locked down for so many months.
Read the full column here.
TIM SMITH: VICTORIA STILL EMBARRASSINGLY BEHIND
On Sunday, NSW had zero active cases of the virus. In fact, Sunday marked 28 days without a locally acquired case of coronavirus in NSW, the first time they achieved this since the pandemic began.
On January 11, NSW had 201 active cases of COVID-19. All this was achieved since their December outbreak, without a statewide lockdown and silly directions like mandatory masks outdoors.
Compare that to the omnishambles that is our state’s tragic response to this virus — 22 active cases from yet another avoidable transmission at a quarantine hotel and Victorians are once again locked up, children to be schooled at home, and businesses closed for the first time since October.
But it doesn’t have to be like this.
Read the full column here.
VICTORIA’S RECOVERY LAGGING BEHIND
Victoria’s business recovery is lagging behind the rest of the country, new figures reveal.
Australian Taxation Office data showed by the end of last year there were still more than 650,000 Victorians having their wages subsidised through the JobKeeper scheme, down from 1.1 million earlier in the year.
The 44 per cent drop between October and December in Victoria paled in comparison with the 60 per cent fall in NSW and the 70 per cent plunge in WA.
— Additional reporting: Tamsin Rose and Olivia Jenkins
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