At-home gatherings still significant virus risk as restrictions ease
Unguarded family gatherings are set to present Victoria with the greatest risk of spawning fresh coronavirus outbreaks, as the Premier announced Melburnians could visit and see guests from other households from Wednesday.
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Households and unguarded family gatherings present the greatest risk of spawning fresh coronavirus outbreaks as Victoria reopens, health authorities have warned.
However, Premier Daniel Andrews has indicated the state is unlikely to be plunged into a third widespread lockdown, hoping any future wave of cases could be dealt with via localised measures.
Melburnians will be allowed to visit each other in their homes with strict rules on how many people can go and how many times a day.
Two adults and children, that cannot be left unsupervised, from one household can gather in a household within their 25km radius once a day.
For example, two parents can visit a grandparent with their children once per day.
Mr Andrews also asked for people to keep a record of visitors that can be accessed by contact tracers of an outbreak occurs and recommended that masks should be worn indoors.
The threat of family gatherings was voiced as it was confirmed illicit household visits between known infected cases helped fuel the ongoing northern suburbs outbreak that threatened to derail Melbourne’s road map out of lockdown.
Outlawed mass family gatherings were also found to have rapidly spread COVID-19 after Victoria reopened on June 1 following the state’s first coronavirus wave, having first leaked out of the hotel quarantine system.
As attention turned to whether the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2500-strong contact tracing team was better placed to contain new outbreaks than during the second wave, testing commander Jeroen Weimar said households would also be expected to play their part.
“You might think six months in people understand the message that say ‘you can’t visit each other in each other’s homes’ – yet we still find cases where that happens,” Mr Weimar said.
The northern suburbs cluster – which has grown to 39 cases spread across 11 households – also involved families visiting each other, Mr Weimar revealed on Monday.
“They should not have been seeing each other,” he said.
“There is evidence of some contact between households post isolation quarantine.”
However, DHHS is refusing to accept responsibility for confusion which saw the cluster break containment measures when an infectious Grade 5 student was mistakenly sent to school.
The family at the centre of the outbreak released correspondence sent to them by DHHS officers when some members were cleared to end quarantine, saying they believed the message applied to all family members: “...your family has met the Department of Health and Human Services criteria to end isolation” the DHHS email said.
But Mr Weimar on Monday defended the department’s interaction with the family, saying the email formed one part of a “continuous dialogue” and correspondence over more than three weeks.
Mr Weimer said all eight individuals in the household received separate correspondents which were “explicitly clear” in outlining where each was placed in terms of isolation.
“We have been very clear every step of the way,” he said.
“We absolutely accept that there may have been a misunderstanding, but the information we have provided is accurate and to the point.”
While he said it was up to all Victorians to avoid a third lockdown, Mr Andrews said it is “much more likely” another rise in cases would be dealt with by DHHS applying containment rings of increasingly distant contacts around outbreaks than wider restrictions.
Mr Andrews rejected the notion of having publicly-stated thresholds or trigger points so businesses and communities could know if they were approaching another lockdown,
“This much more targeted approach is designed to avoid any thresholds like that and the need to go to those sorts of lockdowns,” Mr Andrews said.
“Every single outbreak, every single case, will be treated on its merits.”
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