Victorian lockdown should be extended for seven days, expert says

Victorian residents should brace themselves for another seven days in lockdown as the state’s Covid-19 cluster continues to grow – fast.

Victorian residents should brace themselves for another seven days in lockdown as the state’s coronavirus cluster continues to grow, one expert says.

University of NSW Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, who is an adviser to the World Health Organisation, believes authorities will have to extend the current seven-day circuit breaker lockdown, although other experts disagree.

Prof McLaws said from an epidemiological perspective, the cluster was still growing.

“It’s growing and it’s growing fast and hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down,” she told news.com.au.

Victoria recorded six new cases on Wednesday.

Prof McLaws said given that cases were still being identified and people had been infected with the Indian variant, which was a “variant of interest”, authorities could not end the lockdown.

“There should not be any discussion yet of lifting restrictions,” she said.

“I can’t see them lifting restrictions for another seven days.

“At the moment this cluster doesn’t show any signs of ending.”

Prof McLaws also pointed to the identification of another “tangential” case of a man who appeared to have been infected through fairly insignificant contact at a coffee shop.

RELATED: Victoria’s five-day vaccination blitz

Melburnians may have to strap in for another seven days of lockdown. Picture: William West/AFP

Fears over cases acquired through ‘fleeting’ contact

Victorian COVID-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar told reporters on Tuesday the case may have contracted the virus through “fleeting” contact with the Stratton Finance cluster in Port Melbourne.

The man lived around the corner from the office and was known to have visited a number of coffee shops and units that Stratton employees also visited.

“What we’re seeing is an individual who has had relatively infrequent, relatively fleeting contact with we think a couple of people over two days,” Mr Weimar told reporters.

“That appears to be enough to get this infection across.”

Mr Weimar said at least four of the state’s cases appear to have been transmitted via casual, fleeting contact.

He said authorities had previously been focused on transmission between close contacts such as family members or friends but were now grappling with “stranger to stranger transmission”.

“They’re brushing past each other in a small shop, they’re going round a display home … they’re looking at phones in a Telstra shop,” he said.

“And that’s very different from where we’ve been before.”

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said the current outbreak was “playing out a bit differently to earlier outbreaks”.

RELATED: Victoria’s outbreak likely the ‘fastest moving’ in Australia

Victoria’s Minister for Health, Martin Foley, addresses the media. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Ian Currie

“There continues to be significant concerns around ongoing transmission in particularly, our northern suburbs, and many large exposure sites that have been added to the exposure site list over the last 36 hours,” Mr Foley said.

Victoria’s list of exposure sites has now topped 300 venues.

“Our public health team are currently weighing up whether there is still coronavirus circulating in these communities,” Mr Foley said.

“And we still consider our response to the current outbreak on a day by day basis.”

Due to concerns about spread of the virus through casual contact, authorities are asking people to get tested if they have visited particular venues in the past two weeks where positive cases have circulated.

These venues are:

• Craigieburn Central

• Bay Street in Port Melbourne

• Clarendon St in South Melbourne

• Pacific Epping, also known as Epping Plaza

• Epping North shopping centre

• Broadway in Reservoir

Victoria risking a ‘third wave’ if opens up too early

Prof McLaws believes Victoria needs to be seeing zero case days before opening up.

“That’s the correct outbreak management,” she said.

“This is because this is a variant of concern so the ability to be transmitted from one person to the next is potentially higher.

“You have to work on the worst-case scenario when you’re working on outbreak management.”

She said extending the lockdown for another seven days would ensure any extra cases that contact tracers missed would be flushed out.

“This does take its toll on Victorians but the alternative is a third wave potentially,” she said.

Prof McLaws is also cautious about the prospect of opening up regional areas because there is still the potential for Melburnians to transmit the virus into these areas.

“With a variant of interest you have to be very cautious,” she said.

Experts are still learning about the infectiousness of the sublineage spreading in Victoria, but Prof McLaws said a different sublineage of the Indian variant, was “running through India at the speed of light”.

“So we should be having a very precautionary approach, while trying to increase vaccination rates,” she said.

She said the infiltration of the virus into an aged care facility was also potentially a concern.

“That’s why being precautionary is best,” she said.

Identification of ‘fleeting’ contact cases may be a good sign

However, Deakin University Professor Catherine Bennett believes Victoria’s lockdown could be eased this week and said she thought the identification of “fleeting cases” was a good sign of how forensic the analysis of every case had become.

She said 12 per cent of Melbourne’s second wave cases had also been listed as mystery cases, which some suggested was due to people not getting tested or not providing thorough lists of everyone they had been in contact with.

While this is possible, Prof Bennett believes Victoria’s better contact tracing against a backdrop of zero Covid cases was making it easier to see how the virus can spread through casual exposures.

Mr Weimar also acknowledged that Victoria did not have this level of granular detail for Victoria’s second wave and so it was not possible to know for sure how significant the current figures were.

Prof Bennett said the current percentage of mystery cases was also sitting around 10 per cent, compared to 12 per cent for the second wave, so she believes they are in line.

“They (the casual contact cases) might have been before but were just not visible,” she told news.com.au.

She is optimistic of Victoria’s lockdown being lifted if cases on Wednesday are contained to people already quarantining and testing rates remain high, especially those associated with shopping centres and other areas the government has identified.

While some restrictions like masks may need to stay in place, Prof Bennett said authorities may be able to ease some rules, particularly in regional Victoria.

“They might ask restrictions to remain in place until the weekend, if anything,” she said.

“They may keep some safety measures in place to make sure they’ve mopped up the last of the spread.”

She said restaurants may have to remain closed over the weekend and indoor gatherings may still be restricted but unlike Prof McLaws she didn’t believe it was necessary for the state to get to zero cases in order to open up.

Prof Bennett said the current outbreak was not like the state’s second wave when authorities were unsure where the virus had spread to.

“This time they are just making sure nothing was missed,” she said.

She said authorities now had the “best map of an outbreak anywhere in the world”.

“We should use that to be more confident,” she said.

“I think we should be optimistic about the public health response and very optimistic given the public’s response.

“Hopefully the data (in the next few days) confirms they’ve found the limits of the outbreak, that it’s under control and they can ease some restrictions, even if they cannot completely open up.”

[e-mail] | @charischang