Rolling coverage: Seven cases, five deaths; hundreds turned away from testing in Shepparton
Hundreds of people have been turned away from a testing site in Shepparton, hours after the town became the site of Victoria’s latest COVID-19 outbreak. In Melbourne, two separate Woolworths stores have been linked to virus cases.
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A COVID-positive Melburnian who spread the virus to Kilmore has also transmitted the virus in Shepparton, it has been revealed.
It comes as seven new coronavirus cases, with three linked to known outbreaks, were confirmed in Victoria overnight. Five deaths were reported on Wednesday.
VIRUS CASES LINKED TO TWO WOOLIES STORES
Two coronavirus cases have been linked to separate inner-city Woolworths supermarkets in Melbourne.
The supermarket confirmed today that a staff member who worked at Woolworths QV from on October 6 and 7 had contracted the virus.
Woolworths said it was made aware of the positive infection yesterday, and released a statement on its website today informing customers of the COVID-19 positive employee.
“We’re making contact with our team members and providing our full support to those required to self-isolate in line with advice from the health authorities,” the Woolworths statement said.
“As a food retailer, we already have very high standards of cleaning and hygiene in place. As an extra precautionary measure, we have undertaken an additional deep clean of the store.”
A customer who shopped at the Malvern Woolworths store on October 6 has also been confirmed to have tested positive for COVID-19.
A Woolworths spokesperson said as a food retailer, they maintain very high standards of cleaning and hygiene, and the QV stores had additional cleaning overnight on Tuesday.
“While the DHHS has confirmed the risk of transmission to customers and team members is low, the safety and wellbeing of the local community is our top priority,” a Woolworths spokesperson said.
“Customers and team members should be assured they can continue to safely shop and work at our QV supermarket.”
ACTIVE CASES DROP TO 182
The latest deaths include a woman in her 70s, two men in their 80s and two women in their 90s. Four of the five deaths are linked to aged-care.
The state’s 182 active cases include 16 healthcare workers.
Regional Victoria has eight active cases, including five in Mitchell Shire. There are also 30 active cases in aged-care.
Twenty-three people are being treated in hospital with the virus and none are in intensive care.
More than 16,000 tests were processed on Wednesday.
Commander for testing at the DHHS Jeroen Weimar said the three new Shepparton coronavirus cases were linked to the Chadstone and Kilmore clusters.
The new cases have brought regional Victoria’s 14-day tally to 0.6 — an increase of 0.2.
Of Wednesday’s seven new cases, three are in Greater Shepparton, two are in Wyndham, and there are single cases in Moreland and Whitehorse.
SHEPPARTON CASES LINKED TO CHADSTONE CLUSTER
The index case, from Melbourne, visited Shepparton on September 30 after contracting the virus when he was exposed to it at The Butcher Club in Chadstone Shopping Centre.
The Melbourne man had not revealed to contact tracing teams that he had visited Shepparton until he was probed about it on Tuesday.
It is unclear if the man deliberately concealed the information or simply forgot.
“What appears to have happened is this individual who had a permit also stopped off in Shepparton, that information wasn’t forthcoming until last night,” Mr Weimar told Neil Mitchell on 3AW Radio.
“We are only as good as the information we get.
“When we did the original conversation around the Kilmore cluster, the information around Shepparton wasn’t forthcoming. We were unable to start the early tracing in Shepparton. “We would have rather been in that situation 10 days ago.”
Mr Weimar said another case in Shepparton from October 5 is not linked to the Shepparton outbreak announced overnight.
The three new cases in Shepparton were discovered on Tuesday afternoon after a woman came forward to be tested because she was symptomatic over the weekend.
Twelve people in her workplace were tested overnight, with two returning positive tests.
Mr Weimar described the Shepparton outbreak as a “rapidly moving” situation.
PREMIER REVEALS FULL ‘COST OF RESTRICTIONS’
Daniel Andrews has detailed the rationale behind his government’s drawn-out road map to recovery, saying there will come a point where the cost of lockdown “will be greater than” opening up.
The Premier made the comments while addressing the media on Wednesday after being asked about the knock-on impact of restrictions across the healthcare system.
“These measures — and this is why it’s so very difficult to impose restrictions like this — do come at a cost,” he said.
“There is a public health benefit but there’s also cost, and some of those are measured at a very personal level, in terms of the health, both physical and mental of individual Victorians, their families.”
Mr Andrews went on to explain Victoria’s restrictions are not “an indefinite arrangement” and won’t be completely held to specific numbers despite the state government’s controversial road map.
“At some point, the cost of the restrictions will be greater than the increased risk and the increased challenge for our public health team to keep suppressed the virus if we open earlier than we had planned,” he said.
“Victorians can be assured that many hundreds and thousands of hours have been spent thinking about making these really fine judgments … they’re not easy.”
“And that’s why there has been extra investment in mental health, there’ll have to be some of the extra screening (health) activity … in lots of different ways … and that won’t be one budget one week or one month. I think there’s going to have to be a sustained effort well into 2021.”
SHEPPARTON LOCALS TURNED AWAY FROM TESTING
Hundreds have been turned away from the GV Health COVID-19 testing site in Shepparton — including people potentially exposed to the virus — amid a blow out in waiting times.
The wait for tests at the hospital and the Shepparton Showgrounds was six-hours-long as people sheltered from the heat with umbrellas and hospital staff handed out sunscreen.
Vicky, who worked at Shepparton Bunnings on the day the COVID-19 case attended, said she was turned away from the hospital testing site by a police officer.
“They’re not doing priority testing,” she said.
“They’re way under prepared, but I guess this was expected.
“There’s not much I can do except come back tomorrow morning.”
Tyler Howard was about to leave the line until he let staff know he was waiting because he was an official close contact.
At this point, he was rushed to the front of the queue.
Mr Howard estimated a couple hundred people were turned away in front and behind him.
“It’s a bit upsetting and annoying,” he said.
“I’m sure the ones who need the tests done are being turned away too.”
Mr Howard was furious the case came from Melbourne.
“The guy who came up shouldn’t have.”
GV Health CEO Matt Sharp apologised for the long testing wait times.
“GV Health’s testing sites … are experiencing a high demand for COVID-19 testing today,” he said
“I am sorry there are queues and delays as a result of this.
“We are working on a solution that will allow people to pre-register before attending for testing or while waiting in line.”
GV Health will also be operating a drive through clinic at the Shepparton Sports Precinct on the corner of Numurkah Road and Brauman Street from 10am to 5.30pm on Thursday.
SYDNEY RECORDS THREE TIMES MORE NEW CASES THAN MELBOURNE
Another 14 new cases of coronavirus have been diagnosed in NSW overnight, with 11 of those locally acquired infections.
The tally marks a spike compared to Victoria’s seven new infections — with just four recorded in Melbourne.
Nine cases are linked to the Lakemba GP cluster and another two are associated with the private healthcare clinic outbreak at Liverpool, both of which are in the city’s southwest suburbs.
“Investigations into the source of that cluster continue,” chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant said.
Three cases are returned travellers in hotel quarantine.
Overnight another positive case was recorded in a man from Bargo. It will be included in Thursday’s numbers and remains under investigation.
“As the Premier said, we are in a critical phase … it’s reassuring overnight that the cases were linked to known clusters,” Dr Chant said.
“Obviously, overnight we are investigating a couple of other cases … to see if they are similarly linked.
“We are still trying to unravel the source of a couple of the clusters, and for that reason we really are asking the community to come forth and get tested.”
DINER’S DETAILS HANDED OVER TO VIC POL
The diner who brought COVID-19 back to previously virus-free pockets of regional Victoria has been referred to police.
The fresh twist comes as it was revealed the infected man went Bunnings, ate out and visited a golf club during his visit through the regions.
Premier Daniel Andrews went on to confirm the matter has now been referred to Victoria Police.
“It has gone to the compliance unit and they will provide further information to Victoria Police from DHHS and they will make further judgments,” he said.
“You don’t get in trouble if you tell the full story, I want to make that clear to people. You potentially do get into trouble if you don’t.
“He wouldn’t have got into trouble for telling the whole story. It is only when you don’t that we all have problems.”
It comes as authorities discovered the man behind the outbreak had been to Shepparton during their contact tracing late on Tuesday.
Every person was asked who they had been in contact with and a reference was made to a visitor from Melbourne.
He will now be interviewed a second time by the department.
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton said he could yet guarantee the man, who works as a truck driver, had not travelled anywhere else.
“That’s part of the power of work we’ll do today.”
Mr Sutton also flagged further work would be done to verify the man’s movements.
He said the department had the power to contact employers and seek further information.
“We’ll have to consider that,” he said.
“We’ll have to use every tool at our disposal.
“We don’t want people to withhold information because they’re in fear that we will investigate other data that they don’t want looked at.
“There is a balancing act there.
“If we have to interrogate phones for GPS information, those powers are available.”
Although the man had a permit to travel for work, he broke public health guidelines by visiting a cafe, a Bunnings and other venues not open to people from Melbourne.
REGIONAL VICTORIA RESPONDS TO VIRUS OUTBREAK
GV health CEO Matt Sharp said the hospital first became aware of a positive case at 1pm Tuesday.
“As a result, (we) brought in a small number of people for testing,” he said.
Two other people returned positive results after this targeted testing, with Mr Sharp saying the contact tracing team had undertaken “excellent” work.
“It’s enabled us to gain a quick understanding and set up our response to contain and manage the outbreak,” he said.
But Mr Sharp said he was not privy to the conversation with the person who travelled from Kilmore to Benalla and stopped in Shepparton.
“It’s always a challenge when people don’t provide the fullest information,” he said. “You rely on patients to provide the information.”
The testing line outside GV Health is in the hundreds.
Meanwhile, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has defended contact tracing efforts and urged COVID-positive people to be honest in their interviews.
“To be absolutely clear, delays in cluster investigations are not about the response, which is immediate,” he said.
“We need everyone to be honest about who their close contacts are, where they work, and where they’ve been. Every time. For everyone’s sake.
“Others are put at genuine risk when we can’t follow-up people who have been exposed or places that everyone needs to know about as a prompt for testing and self-isolation. With timely, honest information we can protect Victoria. And defeat this virus.”
Shepparton MP Suzanna Sheed said the community was reeling from the news after spending weeks without a single case of coronavirus.
She said there were already long lines at testing centres in the town as residents came forward.
“There will be great anxiety in my community,” she said.
‘All of my staff will get tested, as will I, because we can’t be sure of anything at the moment and I think that’s just the safe and responsible thing to do.”
Ms Sheed said it would be difficult to catch up to the virus after it had been in the area for potentially 10 to 12 days.
“You would just have to wonder why someone wasn’t prepared to say they’d been Shepparton when they were prepared to say they’d been to Kilmore and Benalla,” she said.
“It sets us back as a community because we’ve only found out about it yesterday.”
The Department of Health and Human Services announced the positive results late on Tuesday night and said more infections were expected as a result.
It is the first time in several weeks that new cases were recorded in the region.
In a statement at 11pm, the DHHS said the three people were all self-isolating at home.
Residents of Shepparton experiencing symptoms, or who visited the high-risk locations, have been advised to get tested for coronavirus.
Mr Weimar said: “Extensive contact tracing has commenced by local authorities. We expect as part of that effort, further cases will be discovered.”
People who have attended any of the “high risk” sites on the dates listed are considered as coronavirus-positive close contacts and are required to isolate, get tested and self-quarantine.
Their household contacts will also be forced to quarantine as well.
“We’re asking anybody in Shepparton who has been to those locations on those particular dates to come forward and get tested,” Mr Weimar said.
“Anyone in Shepparton who doesn’t feel well, should come forward and get tested today.”
It is unclear if the household contacts need to get tested as well or if they only need to quarantine.
“If you visited one of these sites, you are a close contact, you need to be tested and quarantine,” the DHHS website says.
“We ask also those also in your household quarantine with you.”
Further high risk locations may be added as contact tracing continues on Wednesday.
From 9am residents can be tested at GV Health’s Acute Respiratory Clinic, with further testing sites to be established on Wednesday. A pop-up site will be established at the showgrounds from 12.30pm.
In metropolitan Melbourne, the rolling 14-day average has fallen to 9.6 after rising to double digits on Tuesday.
The seven cases reported on Wednesday mark the first time a single-digit increase has been recorded since six cases on October 7.
And Wednesday’s death toll is the highest daily spike in Victoria since seven fatalities were added on September 29.
Melbourne’s mystery case tally over the past fortnight is now 14 — an increase of one.
SHEPPARTON OUTBREAK ‘DEVASTATING’
Federal Member for Nicholls Damian Drum the outbreak was “an absolute mess”.
“Obviously it’s devastating news for Shepparton and all of the families and businesses that were hoping for a significant easing of restrictions,” he said.
“We’re going to have to be vigilant for quite a while.
“We’re now looking at how quickly we can get on top of the contact tracing so we can have confidence about bringing the numbers back down.”
But he said the localised contact tracing should give everyone confidence about limiting the spread.
“There’s every chance it could go a little bit higher,” he said
“But we should have every confidence that the numbers will then be contained and brought back under control.
“Through the contact tracing team, we know where they go, where the various times are and we have a very detailed view.
“This information wasn’t available when the first wave went through.”
Meanwhile, one of the COVID-contaminated businesses has been forced to turn away customers who were unaware of the new outbreak.
MYSTERY CASES COULD HELP MELBURNIANS OUT OF LOCKDOWN
Victoria must learn to live with COVID-19 and a low number of new mystery cases — not the number of total cases — should trigger the state’s reopening, experts say.
Leading epidemiologists believe this is a more accurate representation of where and how the virus is spreading.
With the government looking to ease restrictions at the weekend, Premier Daniel Andrews on Tuesday admitted the state’s initial road-map targets — a 14-day average of fewer than five cases, then zero cases — may be unachievable.
“We are reviewing daily, we are reviewing weekly, what a likely outcome is in the days and weeks to come,” he said.
“And if upon that further analysis, five is the new zero, and 10 is the new five, well, we’ll have to factor that in.”
Writing for the Herald Sun, Deakin University chair of epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett said “the number that matters more (than new cases) in many ways is the number of so-called ‘mystery cases’.”
She said these cases could pose a risk “if they creep above one or two a day more consistently.”
“Unseen and unchecked transmission might be unlikely to start an outbreak immediately, but it could lead to a low level of transmission among and across households that then can cause new cases to suddenly pop up,” Prof Bennett said.
Australian National University epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon said mystery cases were the biggest concern going forward.
He said without a vaccine on hand, quickly finding and isolating those cases was the best defence.
“If you look at a lot of the cases in Victoria, it’s been essential workers in workplaces, tea rooms, or those travelling together,” Prof Collignon said.
“The mystery cases are the ones, in my view, that are the most dangerous. It means if your contact tracers haven’t worked out where they came from, then there’s probably at least one other case walking around with it.”
Melbourne University epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, whose research was used by the state government to inform the state’s extended lockdown, said mystery cases represented the virus’s true movements.
He said with elimination now unlikely, mystery cases would play an important role in achieving suppression.
“Focusing on the mystery cases has merit,” Prof Blakely said.
“I would give more emphasis to those … the mystery cases start to tell us how good our contact tracing teams are. What we need now think is to think about how contact tracing, testing and surveillance work together.”
He said by using the total cases as the “denominator” and dividing the number of mystery cases, a clearer idea of transmission could be determined and some restrictions, such as the 5km travel limit, could be scrapped.
The state’s rolling 14-day average continues to hover at about 10 cases ahead of Sunday’s big announcement.
The government was on Tuesday night fighting to get its contentious pandemic Omnibus bill through parliament’s upper house. The vote was complicated after the state opposition tried to amend the bill to remove the 5km travel limit.
A big share of crossbench MPs were in favour of removing this restriction, forcing the issue to a committee process and further debate before a final vote.
It was expected the 5km rule amendment would fall just short of the votes required, with politicians anticipating the result would come down to a single vote either way.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on Tuesday said authorities were reviewing restrictions daily, acknowledging their “harm” on Victorians.
“There’s no question there’s frustration,” he said.
“There’s no question that people are hurt and harmed by the restrictions that have been in place, but the road map is laying out a pathway to easier and easier ways of living it at the same time as managing case numbers.”
VICTORIA CONTINUES TO BORROW HEAVILY
Treasurer Tim Pallas has warned the state government will see large deficits as it borrows to build and fund Victoria’s economic recovery.
But he said he was becoming more optimistic about the economy
“We will see large deficits, there’s no doubt that,” he said.
“I don’t want to mislead people but I can tell your with some certainty it will be a large number.”
Mr Pallas confirmed construction and projects would form a major part of the government’s budget, but said other support would be needed for groups that have suffered most.
“Women, younger people and those with lower skill levels, they tend to be in industries that are not necessarily or immediately supported by infrastructure expenditure,” he said.
“We’ll be looking at ways we can assist women back into labour market participation.”
Mr Pallas said the government would work to complement the federal budget, which could include plugging areas in need of support.
The state government has not yet set a date for this year’s budget.