Coronavirus: Sex worker clients urged to get tested in Victoria

A sex worker is among a bundle of ‘mystery’ coronavirus cases linked to the St Kilda area.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in Melbourne on Wednesday. Picture: David Crosling

A St Kilda sex worker is among 15 people who have tested positive for coronavirus after frequenting Melbourne’s inner southeast, in a bundle of “mystery cases” health authorities say are so far linked only by geography.

The sex worker’s case was ­revealed as Victoria recorded 24 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including six people who spent time in the community while infectious.

Health Minister Martin Foley said the sex worker’s case was ­detected after she went to a hospital emergency department.

“There is no evidence of transmission having occurred because of this person’s sex work occupation, but out of caution we are asking that if you have employed a sex worker in the St Kilda area … no matter where you are, you need to come forward and get tested,” Mr Foley said.

He said the woman had been living in a rooming house facility, supported by a specialist social housing provider, with fellow residents who had been tested so far returning negative results and ­efforts under way to ensure the local homeless community and people in associated rooming houses and hostels are also tested.

A pop-up testing facility has been established next to St Kilda’s Palais Theatre, with exposure sites listed on Wednesday including the Salvation Army Crisis Centre and Sacred Heart Mission Dining Hall in Grey St, and The Women’s House at Sacred Heart Mission in Inkerman St. The Salvation Army’s Melbourne outreach centre in Bourke St in the CBD was also listed.

Covid logistics chief Jeroen Weimar said Victoria’s mystery cases had been consolidated into six key groupings in recent days, with 211 of 252 cases linked to the current outbreaks attributed to a cluster that emerged on August 4 in an Al-Taqwa College teacher who lives in Hobsons Bay, and has since spread to Caroline Springs, Melton and Glenroy in Melbourne’s west and northwest.

A further eight cases are linked to a West Footscray cluster which first emerged in a warehouse worker in Maribyrnong, while three are linked to the City of Melbourne, six to public housing towers in Lygon St, Carlton, and two to Wyndham Vale in Melbourne’s outer southwest.

There are then 15 cases, most of which are yet to be linked to one another, in people who frequented the St Kilda, Caulfield North and Middle Park areas.

“We have within that cluster accountants, we have architects, we have a sex worker, we have members of the Orthodox Jewish community and a pizza guy who works in a pizza shop (in Malvern),” Mr Weimar said.

“It is a very broad and disparate range of people. The only thing that connects them at this point in time is some association particularly in that St Kilda area.

“We are exceptionally concerned about what we don’t know yet in that area. There are clearly a number of chains of transmission that we do not have full pictures of and we want to use the next few days to get a full understanding of any transmissions that might be happening.”