Three new local cases; positive case worked multiple shifts at Grape and Grain Liquor Cellars
A bottle shop and taphouse is now subject to a two-week quarantine order after its risk level was urgently escalated by health authorities.
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The level of COVID risk at a Moorabbin bottle shop has been escalated after health authorities deemed the risk of transmission far greater than initially thought.
Grape and Grain Liquor Cellars, on Station St, is now subject to a two-week quarantine order.
The location had already been identified as a public exposure site after a staff member worked several shifts there during the Christmas and New Year period while infectious.
Anyone who visited the venue during the identified time frames between December 21 and 29 was previously allowed to leave isolation if they returned a negative test result.
But they must now quarantine for 14 days from the time of the exposure, even if they do not test positive for COVID-19, after the DHHS revised their advice.
A bottle shop is also at the centre of a fresh NSW outbreak, with anyone who visited the Berala BWS between December 22 and 31 told to get tested and isolate for 14 days.
Two new cases have been linked to the bottle shop cluster in Sydney’s west.
It comes as Victoria recorded four new cases of coronavirus overnight — three locally and one in hotel quarantine.
All three of the latest locally acquired cases have been linked to the Black Rock cluster, which has grown to 24 cases of the 36 active across the state.
Every Victorian case outside of hotel quarantine has been linked to the Black Rock cluster, acting premier Jacinta Allan said.
Ms Allan said the results were a positive result after a whopping 32,468 people were tested on Sunday.
“This is a really strong day for Victoria because it comes off the back of a huge number of tests,” she said.
BOOST JUICE, NANDOS, PUFFING BILLY AMONG EXPOSURE SITES
Another train line has been listed as an exposure site after a confirmed case travelled from Flinders St in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
They took the Pakenham line to Westall Station from 3-4 am on January 1, with the DHHS instructing fellow passengers to get tested immediately and isolate until they receive a negative result.
It is the fourth train line to join the list, with the Bairnsdale, Frankston and Sandringham lines already announced as exposure sites.
That same night, a confirmed case also visited the Elizabeth St Nandos restaurant.
The DHHS has added the fast food outlet to their exposure list after a person with COVID-19 dined there from 1-2 am on January 1.
Anyone who was present at the time must get tested immediately and quarantine until they receive a negative result.
Meanwhile, a Boost Juice worker at Chadstone has tested positive, with centre’s Boost kiosks closed for deep cleaning.
“Our team has been notified a person who worked at Boost Juice (outside Bonds) has returned a positive test for COVID-19,” a statement said.
“The team member last worked on-site on Tuesday, 29 December between 6-11pm.
“We are working closely with the team at Boost Juice, both kiosks at Chadstone are currently closed and a deep clean has been undertaken. We’ve also completed a deep clean of our centre, as an additional precaution.”
Puffing Billy has also been listed as an exposure site after a person with COVID-19 visited the popular family tourist attraction’s Lakeside Station on New Year’s Eve from 3-5pm, the DHHS reports.
Anyone present during that time frame should monitor for symptoms.
More new exposure sites, including two stores at a busy shopping centre, were listed by the DHHS on Monday morning.
A confirmed case dined at Collingwood’s Stomping Ground Brewing Company on December 28 from 6pm to 7.30pm.
Myer and Cotton On’s Southland Shopping Centre stores have also been added to the list after a confirmed case visited their premises on December 22 between 10.30am and 11am, and 12.15pm and 12.45pm respectively.
In the state’s southeast, a new exposure site has been found in Keysborough — the first in the suburb.
The Keysborough Sikh Temple was visited by a confirmed case on New Year’s Day from 2-5pm.
TARGET ZERO: BOLD PLAN TO EASE RESTRICTIONS
Health bosses are gunning for a zero-case day by the weekend and hope to ease restrictions as early as mid-January if the state can sustain a COVID-free streak.
The next 48 hours will be critical in revealing whether the Black Rock outbreak — which grew to 21 cases yesterday — has been controlled, senior public health officials have told the Herald Sun.
The next key indicator will be how many new cases emerge among Victorians who have returned from NSW in the past four days, sources say.
If both those outcomes are positive, officials are confident the state will achieve no new cases by the weekend.
“The clear plan is to get back to those zero days as quickly as possible and hold it there,” Ms Allan said.
Read the full story here.
ANOTHER DAY OF TESTING QUEUE CHAOS
Mounting queues have again appeared at testing centres around the city.
Acting Premier Jacinta Allan said people who wished to get tested would be diverted from busy testing sites to less-busy sites.
Close contacts of known cases would be prioritised, the acting premier said.
“There is a priority placed on those close contacts of our known cases,” Ms Allan said. “They will be given priority through our testing program.”
Motorists are waiting three hours to be tested at Darebin Arts Centre in Preston, with dozens of cars are queued in the car park located on Bell St.
Reid Davidson, 22, arrived from northwest NSW on December 29 and is being tested due to cold-like symptoms.
“I think I caught it after coming back to Melbourne but I just want to do the right thing,” he said.
Asked about testing delays, he said: “It is what it is. I got here early so I didn’t have to wait as long.”
A woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said she arrived at the testing site before 8am after developing a sore throat.
She said she expected to wait a long time to be tested. “It’s what you have to do,” she said.
Testing at MSAC was opened an hour early on Monday amid days of frustration over lengthy delays.
Health officers began testing people at the Albert Park site at 8am on Monday morning.
A spokesman told the Herald Sun there was a three-hour wait for testing by 9am.
In the city’s northeast, testing was temporarily closed at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital on Monday morning due to exceeded capacity.
The site, since reopened, had a 90-minute testing wait by 10.45am.
THOUSANDS STILL STRANDED IN NSW
Thousands of Victorians have been left stranded in NSW awaiting exemption applications to be processed before they can return home.
The border remains closed, with Victoria providing no indication when they might be lifted.
Acting Premier Jacinta Allan said on Monday just 175 of the 2200 applications by Victorian residents had so far been processed.
Ms Allan said teams tasked with assessing the exemption requests would be boosted today with extra personnel on hand to fast track the process.
Priority is being given to exemptions on medical and compassionate grounds.
“There are additional resources being pushed out on the team that is examining each and every one of these applications,” she said.
“You can understand that the detail has to be examined about what’s on the application.
“Each case is being case managed with individual attention, that takes a bit of time to work through.
“It’s also important to note that there are immediate exemptions for people facing medical emergencies.”
Ms Allan urged any Victorian wanting to return home to make an application for consideration, and said some of the 175 exemption applications already processed had been granted.
The acting premier said the government was aware of concerns about school students being back in Victoria in time for a return to school but said the current priority was to people with emergency and compassionate reasons and essential workers.
“Exemptions will only be granted on health advice,” she said.
Applicants have been warned only those with “genuine” reasons will be accepted.
“We will only be granting exemptions for people who put in genuine medical, emergency, family, hardship reasons to get back in,” Victoria’s COVID-19 commander Jeroen Weimar said.
“There will be conditions applied to those individuals (including) mandatory hotel quarantine. I sympathise with the people locked out, but we have to take a view about what’s right for the wider Victorian community.”
It comes after Victorians trying to get home were hung up on after being told the government’s helpline was too busy.
An automated message on the health department’s coronavirus line said a high number of calls meant no one was available to answer before the line went dead, without giving an option to wait.
The sudden border closure spurred an estimated 60,000 Victorians to rush home from NSW, some with just a few hours’ notice.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt urged the Victorian government to have compassion for more than 1000 residents trapped in NSW.
It is understood the Victorian government will ensure families are home in time for the start of school at the end of the month, possibly tailoring quarantine and testing requirements for each family.
The DHHS said the hold up was partially due to ensuring “every single application will be individually considered to ensure the travel is for a reason the chief health officer permits”.
“In the coming days we are increasing our coronavirus hotline staff to more than 270, many focusing specifically on exemption applications – and we are also investigating alternative contact options for those seeking an exemption,” a spokesperson said.
The departure of Victorian tourists has “devastated” the NSW communities of Merimbula and Pambula, which were looking forward to a bumper summer after the bushfire disaster last year.
Margie Duggan, of the Merimbula Visitor Information Centre, said visitor numbers were well below normal.
“There are people coming from other parts of NSW, but not Victoria — that was a bit horrific, all of them leaving, it was shades of last year,” she said.
The full impact on local businesses would be known in the coming days.
Jim Caldwell, of Reflections Holiday Parks in Pambula, said bookings had been “decimated”.
“We were full, we have about 50 sites, and we probably had about eight left, I suppose,” Mr Caldwell said.
He said about half who did leave intended to rebook, either later in the summer or at Easter, or next year. The rest had asked for refunds.
“It was a very surreal time; we went to the pub that night and watched the traffic down the highway, bumper to bumper,” he said.
Chris Pawlowsky, of the Shady Gully Caravan Park in Mallacoota, said it was “terrible” for NSW accommodation providers. “It’s a sad end of the year,” he said.
NEW WOES FOR STATE’S LONG-TROUBLED CONTACT TRACING
Victoria has again been forced to defend its contact tracing after a string of errors in reporting where people could have been exposed to coronavirus.
At least five Victorian venues took to social media at the weekend to alert patrons they may have come into contact with a positive case, with some reporting that they had not yet been contacted by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The European Bier Café on Exhibition Street and Grape & Grain in Moorabbin were both forced to close their doors after positive cases were confirmed at the respective venues.
But delays in contacting businesses meant they were forced to do so without any official advice.
John Tei, owner of Grape & Grain liquor bar in Moorabbin, said a staff member tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the Smile Buffalo Thai restaurant in Black Rock on December 21 with two family members.
A two-week quarantine order has since been imposed on the store’s workers and visitors.
He said he was a “little surprised” he had not heard back from the Department of Health and Human Services, as he and others entered self-isolation.
“I haven’t heard officially. I’m very much a novice as everyone is. We’ll just wait to see what happens,” he said.
“I’m sort of waiting for advice from the DHHS on how to attack, but at the moment from reading the website, I’m in self-isolation and so is all the team so I think we’re going to be that way for 14 days.”
“We’ve all been tested – I think four have come back negative so far,” he said, adding he was relieved he had received a negative test result.
Mr Tei said a staff member had tried calling Victorian health department without a response.
Asked if he would try again, Mr Tei said: “I don’t see a lot of point at the moment, having to isolate anyway.”
A winery in Strathbogie, near Euroa, was listed as an exposure site but later corrected to a venue in Lakes Entrance.
Jady and Greg Roberts, owners of Wonga Estate winery, said they were “not particularly happy” about the bungle, which sent the regional community into a panic on Saturday.
“We’re all questioning what (DHHS) are doing. I don’t understand how they got this so wrong,” Ms Roberts said.
Acting premier Jacinta Allan on Monday defended the government’s exposure site updates, saying the priority was getting the information out to the public quickly.
“We think it’s really important to get that information into the hands of Victorians,” she said.
Ms Allan also defended the listing of exposure sites online before affected business owners may have been made aware.
“We’ve got 311 primary close contacts who are being interviewed,” she said. “Huge amounts of information is being gathered from those interviews.”
“I do appreciate this is happening rapidly, and happening in real time.”
“But it is through that frame of making sure we get the information into the hands of Victorians as quickly as possible.”
COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said “you get those errors” in attempting to release information as quickly as possible.
“The alternative is not to put it up at all,” he said.
“So absolutely, we have an option to say we will sit in a bunker and work on all these exposure sites and then release it in the perfect form seven days later. That’s not much point.
“So we will get information as we get it, as soon as we possibly can, because we want to be transparent, we want to people as much notice as possible about the potential risk out there.”
Deakin University Chair of Epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett said any errors made by the DHHS about exposure sites needed to be corrected via social media so the public could be made aware.
“All the way through we have been saying the ‘smallest details matter’ with the virus,” Prof Bennett said.
“There is always a risk of human error. We need to be loud about corrections, if not, you really run the risk of people who were potentially exposed not getting tested.
“We are still showing some signs of not being as tight as we need it to be.”
Infection control expert Professor Peter Collignon, from the Australian National University, said Victorians should be “understanding” of the government’s errors in outbreak listings, but said changes needed to be highlighted.
Opposition leader Michael O’Brien said the state government had “let people down” by not being better prepared and called for greater transparency.
“There’s no reason why this outbreak should get away from us, but the government needs to do its job better,” he said.
“We’re seeing the wrong information being provided to people who have returned to Victoria. I’ve been personally given examples by people who have been given late information by DHHS … wrong information about exposure sites being put up on websites … wrong information being provided to business owners. This just has to end now.”
— Additional reporting by Brianna Travers, Alanah Frost and Brendan Rees
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