What health authorities will look at to make call on statewide lockdown
Victoria could be plunged into another statewide lockdown if coronavirus cases continue to spike. And this is what health authorities will look at to make the call, health editor Grant McArthur explains.
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Victoria’s spiralling coronavirus threat has been likened to “a public health bushfire” — and make no mistake, they are now drawing up plans to build a massive fire break to contain it.
For this blaze, a fire break is a lockdown, with residents across Melbourne — and possibly Victoria — ordered to stay at home so the coronavirus has nowhere to spread and simply burns out.
It is not just a matter of how many COVID-19 cases there are, but where they are and how they got there that will trigger a lockdown.
Based on the data being monitored by Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and his team, the prospect appears more likely by the hour.
A dozen “hot zone” postcodes have already returned to lockdowns and cases continue to grow at pace within them.
But with residents already confined and police acting as a fire break circling the suburbs, the out-of-control blazes are no longer the biggest threat.
Instead, it is what Prof Sutton labelled “spot fires” – or COVID-19 cases detected almost at random in non-hot spot suburbs – that pose the greatest risk.
When there are too many coronavirus cases detected outside the hot zones without explanation, health authorities and the Andrews Government will have no choice but to massively extend the lockdown.
But it is not only the number of COVID-19 cases that will decide our fate, but where they have come from.
For instance, if a couple in Toorak suddenly tests positive for coronavirus, fire sirens would ring. But if contact tracing then reveals they had dinner in Keilor Downs a week ago with a family already in quarantine, then concerns would ease.
The couple would simply be numbers added to the Keilor Downs cluster, not counted as community transmission cases from Toorak.
But if it turned out they had no connection with anyone in the hot zone suburbs, and no obvious source for infection, fears would be huge.
It would mean that whoever infected the Toorak couple was still moving through non-lockdown areas and infected many more people with no controls in place.
When there are enough of these spot fires breaking out, it is only a matter of time before the public health fire break needs to be widened.
The harder question may be where to place the fire break.
Although the blaze may only be burning in Melbourne, there may simply not be enough police to stop people leaving the city and spreading the virus into regional areas, which would leave a statewide lockdown looming.
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