Victoria coronavirus: New family cluster spreads across eight houses

A family outbreak has spread across at least eight homes and accounts for 20 of Victoria’s coronavirus cases, proving the need for strict lockdowns.

A newly identified family COVID-19 cluster in Victoria has signalled just how important Melbourne’s suburban lockdowns are, the chief health officer has said.

The state reported a whopping 77 new coronavirus infections today — its fourth biggest day since March 31 — Professor Brett Sutton told reporters this morning. This came just 48 hours after Premier Daniel Andrews announced more than 310,000 residents across Melbourne’s 10 virus “hot zones” would only be permitted to leave their homes for four reasons.

Of the state’s 415 active coronavirus cases, 20 are linked to a new family cluster in Roxburgh Park, with the infections spanning across eight households.

“This is illustrative of the challenges we’ve seen and the reasons for the restrictions being in place,” Professor Sutton said.

“A Roxburgh Park family, large, extended family over at least eight households, now bringing the total to at least 20. They’re not 20 that are all reported today but there are known to be 20 from all of the links we’ve made.”

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“Large, extended” families have been a thorn in Victoria’s side when it comes to the state’s worsening coronavirus situation, with Health Minister Jenny Mikakos telling reporters on Sunday that gatherings had been partially responsible for the surge in cases.

“We have had lots of families, extended families, coming together and having lunch, dinner, other social gatherings, and people not staying home if they have got mild symptoms, and then spreading the virus to family members, who then take it to their workplace, take it to their school,” Ms Mikakos said.

Mr Andrews also, over the weekend, mentioned the trend in cases being associated with families ignoring restrictions, stating more than half of Victoria’s new infections since the end of April the result of family-to-family transmission.

“It is unacceptable that families anywhere in our state can, just because they want this to be over, pretend that it is,” he said on Saturday afternoon.

“It is pretty clear that behind closed doors … they are not practising social distancing.”

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MUST WATCH: For everyone wondering what happens in a Lockdown police check #VicCorona @BreakfastNews @abcnews #Broadmeadows pic.twitter.com/WcGSh5ce0B

— Georgie Tunny (@georgie_tunny) July 1, 2020

Footage emerged this morning of the police presence in Melbourne’s 10 lockdown postcodes, and what it looks like to drive through a checkpoint at one of the area’s borders.

A number of residents in the areas have already said they won’t comply with the stay-at-home orders, which mandate they can only leave their homes for exercise, food, caregiving and work/school.

“It’s like cutting off freedom,” one woman told 7 News, adding she wouldn’t be following the government’s orders because she’s “got better things to do”.

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Police inspect the driver's licences at a checkpoint in the locked-down suburb of Broadmeadows in Melbourne. Picture: William West /AFP

About 300,000 people in Melbourne have returned to lockdown under the threat of fines and arrest. Picture: William West /AFP

Professor Sutton acknowledged that residents were feeling frustrated or angry that they were being “targeted”, but said “we all have to cop it on the chin”.

“The alternative is that there’s increased transmission and that there are more and more postcodes or all of metro Melbourne or all of Victoria that goes into shutdown,” he said.

“When it’s been out of control in places internationally and continued to be out of control, it’s taken weeks and weeks and weeks to drive numbers down.

“So we have to accept that we’re still in a better position than a number of places internationally and that this is a really frustrating and hard sacrifice for people to make but it is the appropriate measure to get on top of this.”