Coronavirus: Regional ‘mystery’ puzzles contact tracers

A concerning proportion of ­Victoria’s ‘mystery’ coronavirus cases are in parts of regional Victoria where there are otherwise very few cases.

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. Picture: David Geraghty

A concerning proportion of ­Victoria’s “mystery” coronavirus cases are in parts of regional Victoria where there are otherwise very few cases.

Analysis of the active cases that contact tracers had been unable to link to known cases from Monday, released by the state Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday, shows that while there is a broad correlation between high numbers of community transmissions and high caseloads in the city, many smaller clusters in regional areas appear to have seeded from unknown sources.

 

Until Wednesday night, regional Victoria was not subject to any stay-at home restrictions, unlike metropolitan Melbourne, which went into a stage-three stay-at-home lockdown along with the Mitchell Shire on July 9, and entered stage four, with a curfew and strict bans on non-essential work, from this week.

There were 760 active “mystery” cases on Monday; as of Thursday, there had been 2388 of these cases, including 2087 since July 1.

These do not include 3272 cases that remained under investigation on Thursday.

Thursday’s 471 new cases saw the number of active cases in Victoria rise to 7449.

As of Monday, Brimbank, in Melbourne’s outer west, had the highest number of mystery cases at 71. It also had the highest active caseload in the state that day, with 749 cases.

Similarly Wyndham, in the outer southwest, was second with both mystery cases and caseload, with 58 cases from an unknown source and 744 active cases.

Others in the top 10 included Melton, in the outer northwest, with 48 mystery cases; Hume in the outer north with 39; Whittlesea, also in the outer north, with 33; the City of Melbourne with 32; Maribyrnong in the inner west with 31; Casey in the outer southeast with 27; Yarra in the inner northeast with 24; and Moreland in the inner north with 22.

In regional areas, local government areas Murrindindi, in northeast central Victoria, and Ararat, in the west, each had one active case from an unknown source.

There were nine mystery cases in greater Geelong, six each in greater Bendigo and Colac-Otway — despite most Colac cases being linked to a known outbreak and the Australian Lamb Company abattoir in the town.

Five of 28 active cases in the Macedon Ranges in central ­Victoria were mysteries, as were three of 26 in the Mitchell Shire.

Ballarat, Bass Coast, Baw Baw, Loddon, Moorabool, Mornington Peninsula (which is semi-rural but considered part of Melbourne) and South Gippsland all had one mystery case each.

The mystery case statistics come as Australia is poised on Friday to become the 69th country in the world to reach 20,000 recorded cases, with Victoria’s caseload for Friday alone set to see Thursday’s total of 19,890 race past the grim milestone.

As of Thursday, one in every 502 Victorians had been diagnosed with coronavirus.

There have been 150 corona­virus deaths in Victoria since July 5, after eight more people succumbed to the virus in the 24 hours to Thursday.

The state’s death toll since the pandemic began is now 170.