Melbourne outbreak: beer, trams and footy the focus of infection

As Victorians spent their first day in the state’s fifth lockdown on Friday, the number of locally ­acquired cases in the state from two separate NSW incursions had reached at least 26.

The MCG is now listed as a Covid hotspot after last weekend’s Geelong v Carlton game resulted in multiple infections. Picture: Getty Images

The quintessentially Melbourne activities of having a beer at Young & Jackson before catching the tram down Flinders St to a Saturday afternoon footy match at the MCG have resulted in at least seven coronavirus transmissions, all but one of which occurred ­between strangers.

As Victorians spent their first day in the state’s fifth lockdown on Friday, the number of locally ­acquired cases in the state from two separate NSW incursions had reached at least 26.

More than 130 exposure sites extended from Bacchus Marsh and Barwon Heads, west and southwest of Melbourne, to Phillip Island and Hastings to the southeast, and all over Greater Melbourne.

Just over the NSW border in North Albury, a truck wrecking business was belatedly declared an exposure site on Friday, six days after three Covid-infected removalists visited on their way back from a tri-state trip to Victoria and South Australia, which saw them transmit the virus to at least four residents of the Ariele Mari­byrnong apartment building in Melbourne’s west.

Victoria’s latest cases included two teachers at Bacchus Marsh Grammar, 60km west of Melbourne, bringing to five the total number of staff infected after one of those staff members — a man in his 50s — attended the Carlton vs Geelong match on ­Saturday.

All four teachers had been in the classroom on Tuesday and Wednesday at the school’s ­Maddingley campus, exposing up to 2300 students to the virus. The teacher in his 50s spent last Saturday – July 10 – with a friend in his 60s, who lives in the Ariele apartment building and has also infected his elderly parents who live in Craigieburn in Melbourne’s outer north.

The pair caught the train to Flinders St and stopped in at Young & Jackson, which is now linked to cases in two men in their 30s.

One is an ADF member who lives at the naval base HMAS Cerberus on the Mornington Peninsula and the other is an office worker in Richmond.

At the game, the man in his 60s appears to have transmitted the virus to a further four ­strangers.

One is a man in his 30s who is a staff member at Trinity Grammar in Kew in Melbourne’s east, who also attended Tuesday night’s rugby match at AAMI Park between the Wallabies and France.

Others include a man in his 20s from Montmorency, in Melbourne’s northeast, and another man in his 20s from the outer-southwestern suburb of Point Cook, who works at the Sanctuary Lakes Hotel.

The fourth MCG case is that of a nine-year-old boy who attends St Patrick’s Primary School in the southeastern suburb of Murrumbeena.

After the game, the Bacchus Marsh teacher went home to Barwon Heads, 110km southwest of Melbourne near Geelong.

Now three members of his household, including a child who attends the local primary school, have contracted the virus.

Victorian Covid-19 logistics chief Jeroen Weimar said 207 people were known to have been at the Young & Jackson pub during the exposure period on Saturday.

“I would urge everybody, go back through your memory banks, if you were there in that time window, please come forward now,” the said.

“Young & Jackson, the MCG obviously, a couple of the schools, those are the real focal points for us today and over the next few days.”

On Friday afternoon, Deakin University closed three buildings at its Waurn Ponds campus in Geelong for deep cleaning after a staff member tested positive.

It was not yet clear whether this was a case previously made public by the Victorian Health Department, or a new one.