Coronavirus: Victorian cluster boosts the numbers as infections continue to wane

Victoria had eight of 11 new coronavirus cases confirmed in Australia on Monday.

Cedar Meats employees being tested before starting work on Monday. Picture: David Crosling

Victoria had eight of 11 new coronavirus cases confirmed in Australia on Monday, as the state continued to battle a cluster linked to McDonald’s restaurants in Melbourne’s north, and staff returned to work at the abattoir at the centre of the state’s largest outbreak.

Queensland confirmed two COVID-19 cases in recently returned overseas travellers in hotel quarantine, and NSW had one case and Australia’s 99th death from the virus, after a man in his 60s, with pre-existing health conditions, died in western Sydney’s Concord Hospital.

In Victoria, eight new cases were confirmed but the overall total increased by six, due to two duplicated results from previous days. Of those eight, two were linked to a cluster at the Fawkner McDonald’s in Melbourne’s north, including a case in a close contact of a worker, and a case in a delivery driver that forced the closure of 12 other McDonald’s outlets he had visited.

Another three cases were detected among returned overseas travellers in hotel quarantine, two remain under investigation, and one was linked to a close contact of a nurse who contracted the virus at Sunshine Hospital while treating an injured worker from the Cedar Meats abattoir.

The final Victorian case was confirmed in a resident at the Villa Maria Aged Care facility in Bundoora, who later on Monday returned a negative test result. Authorities believe the inconclusive initial test result was a false positive, but are continuing to treat the result as if it were positive as a safety precaution.

A small number of workers on Monday returned to the Cedar Meats cold storage facility after being cleared of COVID-19.

Victorian Deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese van Diemen said no workers ‘‘still susceptible’’ to COVID-19 were among those returning to work at the facility, which has been linked to 99 cases.

"The only workers going back are those who’ve cleared COVID and are no longer susceptible, and there’s a very strict process in place before any further workers are ­allowed back,” she said.

The Department of Health and Human Services has previously used privacy laws to explain why it did not check a claim made by the first Cedar Meats worker confirmed as having COVID-19 on April 2 that he had not attended work for four weeks.

DHHS had not responded late on Monday to questions about why it was permissible for DHHS to give Cedar Meats a list of names of workers who had cleared the virus, but was not permissible last month for DHHS to give the company the name of the first worker who tested positive to check whether he had been at work.

DHHS also said on Monday it was not including close contacts of the Sunshine Hospital nurse who caught COVID-19 from a Cedar Meats worker in the tally of cases linked to the abattoir.

Two close contacts have so far contracted the virus from the nurse, aged in her 60s.