Coronavirus back for another crack at battlers

The virus is once again going after low income, multicultural groups.

Benny Lukose in his Indiagate Spices and Groceries store in Epping, northern Melbourne. Picture: Aaron Francis

Covid-19 has struck in the heartland of lower socio-economic and multicultural Melbourne in the wake of the carnage the virus inflicted on the less well-off in the deadly 2020 outbreak.

The northern suburb of Epping has 15 of the 54 active cases, with nearby Craigieburn and linked suburbs accounting for a further six cases in the worst outbreak in Australia this year.

Epping, near the old Ford factory that closed in 2016, has suffered due to the collapse of manufacturing and is heavily multicultural, with almost 60 per cent of residents having both parents born overseas.

The industrious Indian community is strongly represented in Epping with more than 12 per cent having either a father, mother – or both – born in India, which has been ravaged by the virus.

ABS statistics also show Epping’s median weekly income of $581 for an individual is below the $644 Victorian benchmark, underpinning the need for people to continue to work in the pandemic.

 

Epping, 36km north of Melbourne’s CBD, is one of many suburbs hit hard by the 2020 virus outbreak, which killed hundreds across the city’s north, northwest and west, and is now fighting the worst of the outbreak.

Indiagate Spices and Groceries owner Benny Lukose said his Epping spice shop, which has been linked to a series of positive cases, was usually awash with customers.

The shop was deemed a tier one exposure site by health authorities after a positive Covid-19 case – known colloquially as Wollert man – visited on May 8 after he contracted the virus in South Australia’s hotel quarantine.

“People are scared to come because they think this is an infected area,” the 50-year-old said. 

“We really respect the law and the government, but this is impacting our business and it is really hard to cope in this situation.” 

Another case visited on May 19 and prompted its second shutdown in as many weeks.

There are more than 40 exposure sites listed in Epping, with a population of just over 15,000, and Mr Lukose estimated a quarter of shops in the area were affected in the latest round of hotspots.

In the 2020 outbreak, there was a serious lack of information that flowed to multicultural groups in the outer suburbs. 

Local state Liberal MP Craig Ondarchie said the issue was being replicated in the Epping community in 2021, and he called for a strident response from the Andrews government. “What I think is that there has been a lack of information about how the virus has been transported,” he said. “People think the state government doesn’t care about the north.”

The virus has spread rapidly across Melbourne, with the majority of cases in the outer north, but there are spot fires across the city, including four in the inner region of St Kilda. The concern is that there is a very strong chance the virus will spread across the city.

Part of the reason is that areas such as Epping contain a large number of workers in insecure industries, so even if they get sick they tend to push on.

 

World of Nuts – a family business in the Pacific Epping Plaza shopping centre – had a few masked customers in the afternoon but manager Rita Ibraheem, 46, said business had plunged to 20 per cent of typical trade. 

“(The business) is not really that good,” she said. “The amount we pay for rent is high and there are staff not coming back to work.”

Ms Ibraheem said while vaccination was the only way out of continued lockdowns, she was concerned about rare cases of blood clotting linked with the AstraZeneca jab.   

Her shop is located just outside Coles, another Covid hotspot, where The Australian spoke with a translator who worked at the Northern Hospital. She declined to be identified, but said the local community felt weary going into a fourth lockdown. “They have had enough of it. It’s not the community’s fault but the government … not doing the right thing with the quarantine,” she said. 

 

About a 10-minute drive north of the shopping centre is Woolworths Epping North, at the centre of a Health Department bungle after it was mixed up with Woolworths Epping. Both are now listed as exposure sites.

Epping local Annie Cummins, 29, stopped at Daylesford Park just outside the grocery store to get lunch and let her two children play on the seesaw. “It feels disappointing to me and mistakes keep happening that feel like they should have been able to be prevented.”