Coronavirus: mystery over origin of infections from rally

VicHealth says there’s no evidence to suggest six people who tested positive to COVID-19 after attending BLM protests contracted it at the rally.

Melbourne’s Black Lives Matter protest on Saturday June 6. Picture: AFP

Victoria’s health department says there is no evidence to suggest six people who tested positive to COVID-19 after attending Melbourne’s Black Lives Matter protest acquired the virus at the rally last month.

But the department has refused to say whether a source of infection has been established for all six cases.

The Department of Health and Human Service has also ­declined to explain why it revealed only four of the cases in the weeks following the protest.

The department responded late on Friday to a series of questions by The Australian on Wednesday. The questions followed the newspaper’s report on Wednesday of the department’s confirmation of a link between a family cluster of at least 30 cases including two from the protest, and the outbreak of at least 280 cases in public housing towers in Melbourne’s inner northwest.

The department on Wednesday revealed six people, rather than the previously publicised four, had tested positive after ­attending the 10,000-strong rally in Melbourne’s CBD on June 6.

The Australian asked DHHS on Wednesday: when the two previously unpublicised positive cases who attended the protest test positive to COVID-19, why were their cases not made public, given the other four were; whether a source of infection had been established for all six; and whether it could be ruled out that the two previously unpublicised cases were infectious at the protest.

DHHS replied: “The department was notified about the fifth and six cases on 21 June. Both cases attended the protest on 6 June. There is no evidence to suggest any of the cases who ­attended the protest acquired the virus from the protest.

“Currently no known nor suspected episodes of transmission occurred at the protest itself.”

The response indicates the department became aware of the previously unpublicised fifth and sixth cases the day before it publicly confirmed a case in another protester.