Melbourne Covid-19: Fitzroy, Collingwood, South Yarra and Richmond centre of new outbreak.

Unlike previous variants, the data shows that Melbourne’s Omnicron outbreak is centred in the city’s affluent inner-city suburbs.

Data shows that Melbourne's affluent inner-city suburbs have become the epicentre of the rampant Omnicron strain.

It became as predictable as the daily press press conference that Covid cases in Melbourne’s growing north, south east and west would be “of concern” to authorities due to their disproportionate case numbers.

But as the data from the Christmas period filters in, it is apparent that measured by per capita of population, the summer outbreak is concentrated in Melbourne’s inner-city suburbs and in particular the inner-north.

Taken as a total the municipalities of Casey (817) and Hume (963) outnumber significantly outnumber the City of Yarra (561) and Stonnington (602).

But a different metric — where case numbers are measured as a proportion of the population in a given suburb or LGA — paint a different picture.

While Casey and Greater Dandenong, so frequently a source of concern in the winter and spring Delta outbreak, have case numbers per 100,000 below 300, Yarra and Stonnington’s figure per 100,000 of population is over 500.

The contrast becomes starker as you narrow in to certain suburbs.

Cranbourne, the biggest suburb in the City of Casey, 286 cases per 100,000 residents, and in Dandenong the figure is 148.

At nearly four times that amount is the hipster mecca of Collingwood — where the median house price is nearly double that of Cranbourne — whose number of cases per 100,000 stands at 939.

The figure is paralleled across the inner-north and inner south, with Richmond and South Yarra registering cases per 100,000 well above 600, while the number is Fitrzroy is 765.

Also overnight, as Melbourne recorded a new Covid record of 2, 735 cases, the state’s DHHS confirmed that the St Paul’s Cathedral cluster had rocketed to 45 cases.

According to authorities the cases are linked to a pre-Christmas choir practice at the iconic church.