Experts have their say on when Melbourne’s snap five-day lockdown should end

Top epidemiologists have backed Melbourne’s reopening, but say not every restriction should be eased.

Victoria is poised to emerge from lockdown on Thursday, but experts predict some restrictions could still remain in place as a precaution.

Daniel Andrews will on Wednesday reveal whether the state can reopen after a snap five-day lockdown, imposed after the UK strain of coronavirus leaked from Melbourne Airport’s Holiday Inn.

Top epidemiologists have backed a reopening, saying the majority of cases were likely to have already been identified.

Deakin University Chair of Epidemiology, Professor Catherine Bennett, said low case numbers in recent days should give the government confidence “they have contained it”.

The Victoria market is seen during Melbourne’s snap five-day lockdown. Picture: Mark Stewart

She said it had been about 10 days since the last spreading event and, with symptoms likely to show within five days, most cases should have already been reported.

“We’ve had two spreading events – one within the (Holiday Inn) hotel and one at this private family function (in Coburg),” Prof Bennett said.

“Everything that we have seen to date has been linked to one of those. That’s really good.

“The chance of seeing cases outside these inner rings is diminishing by the day.”

Professor Nancy Baxter, a clinical epidemiologist and head of the University of Melbourne’s school of population and global health, said she anticipated some restrictions would remain even if the lockdown was lifted at midnight.

“I was kind of pessimistic on Sunday and Monday but I’m getting more optimistic now,” Prof Baxter said.

She said the outbreak, believed to have been caused by a man who used a nebuliser and spread COVID-19 throughout the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel, was an “unfortunate series of events” that were unlikely to happen again.

Workers assist people leaving the Holiday Inn on February 16, 2021 in Melbourne

“This was a perfect storm of a bunch of things coming together so I would hope there’s no event where this sort of thing happens again,” she said.

“(For future cases) I would anticipate they would plan to do very intensive contact tracing and maybe some restrictions, but not a full scale lockdown again.”

Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien slammed the Premier for leaving school kids and businesses waiting on whether the state would emerge from lockdown.

“Stringing us along for another 24 hours, another day it’s really not good enough.” he said.

Testing commander Jeroen Weimar said authorities were “not excessively concerned” about Tuesday’s new cases as they were close contacts already in isolation.

Almost 60 close contacts linked to the Holiday Inn outbreak were isolating, along with 499 hotel staff and residents.

Another 1189 primary close contacts linked to various exposure sites and 1991 travellers who passed through terminal 4 — where an infected Brunetti staffer worked — are also isolating.