Coronavirus: Thirteen lives lost an equal high but Victorian infections far from peak

Victoria has equalled its previous record number of 13 coronavirus deaths in 24 hours on the first day of the state’s stage-four lockdown.

A nurse works with a COVID patient in the ICU at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Picture: Aaron Francis

Victoria has equalled its previous record number of 13 coronavirus deaths in 24 hours on the first day of the state’s stage-four lockdown.

While news of 429 new cases — which would have been a record only a fortnight ago — was welcomed following last week’s peak of 723, the 13 new deaths brought the state’s toll from the pandemic to 136 — 116 of which have occurred since July 5.

The 13 deaths included those of a man in his 60s, two men and a woman in their 70s, two men in their 80s and five women and two men in their 90s.

Eight of the 13 new deaths were linked to aged-care facilities.

Monday also saw significant increases in clusters at two of Melbourne’s biggest hospitals, with an outbreak at the Royal Melbourne increasing from 40 cases on Saturday to 54 on Sunday and 71 on Monday.

A cluster at St Vincent’s reached 30 cases, as the number of active cases in healthcare workers in Victoria rose by 57 cases in the 24 hours to Monday, from 649 to 706.

Just four Victorian local government areas recorded double-digit increases in coronavirus case numbers on Monday — compared with 14 on Sunday — but the pattern remains concerning, amid steady increases in areas with previously low levels of virus. Semi-rural Mornington Peninsula is the only local government area in greater Melbourne with fewer than 46 active cases of corona­virus.

All 30 other metropolitan Melbourne LGAs have at least 46 ­active cases, compared with Mornington Peninsula’s 18, and 17 of them have at least 100 active cases.

Brimbank, in the outer west, with 749 active cases and a net increase of 15, and Wyndham, in the outer southwest, with 744 and a net increase of 16, have the highest caseloads in the state.

Casey, in the outer southeast, had a net increase on Monday of 23 active cases to 297, while Darebin in the north had a net increase of 10 to 165.

A swath of local government areas in Melbourne‘s middle and outer northeast, east and southeast recorded net increases of seven or eight cases.

 

In regional Victoria there was a net increase of 29 cases, including nine new cases in Macedon Ranges, eight in Greater Geelong, four in Greater Bendigo, two each in Hepburn, Moorabool and Glenelg and one each in Colac-Otway and Mount Alexander.

There are now 384 active cases across 32 local government areas in regional Victoria.

There have now been 2031 cases for which contact tracers have been unable to find a source of infection, including 1730 since July 1 and 69 since Sunday. This does not include 3418 cases which remain under investigation.

There are now 6489 active cases currently in Victoria.

As of Monday, there are 416 people in Victorian hospitals with coronavirus, up from 385 on ­Sunday. Of these, 35 are in intensive care, down from 38 on ­Sunday.

There were 25,000 tests processed in the 24 hours to Monday, representing a 1.72 per cent positive test rate — a significant decrease from Sunday’s record of 3.73 per cent.