Covid-19: 900 in isolation over case at Melbourne’s Prahran Market

Victoria’s Covid-19 logistics chief has conceded that at least 900 people who were at one of Melbourne’s busiest fresh food markets last Saturday would not now be in home quarantine.

The Prahran Market in Melbourne. Picture: Josie Hayden

Victoria’s Covid-19 logistics chief, Jeroen Weimar, has conceded that at least 900 people who were at one of Melbourne’s busiest fresh food markets last Saturday would not now be in home quarantine — and at risk of having contracted coronavirus — had health authorities handled an exposure at AAMI Park differently.

One of Victoria’s 26 new cases on Thursday is a person believed to have contracted coronavirus at the Wallabies-France rugby Test match at AAMI Park on July 13.

The person was initially classified as a Tier 2 contact, because they had not been sitting near an infected Trinity Grammar teacher who had caught the virus at the MCG three days earlier. Following Tier 2 contact obligations, they got tested and isolated until they received a negative test result.

The person then headed to the Prahran Market in Melbourne’s inner southeast last Saturday, spending more than 90 minutes in the vicinity, including at the adjacent Market Lane coffee shop. On Sunday, they resumed home quarantine, after Victoria’s Health Department updated its classifications of close contacts at AAMI Park, in light of a new infection in someone who had not sat near the teacher, but had entered the stadium through Gate 7 at a similar time.

In a demonstration of how insidious the Delta variant can be, the person then tested positive on Wednesday, with more than 900 Prahran Market close contacts then ordered into 14 days of home quarantine.

Asked whether authorities would have handled the AAMI Park exposure — now linked to six transmissions — differently if they had their time over, Mr Weimar said there were lessons learnt from every outbreak.

“We struck a balance at the outset of the outbreak, particularly at the MCG and AAMI Park, about what we thought was a cautious Tier 1 definition, but what we’ve seen subsequently, particularly with AAMI Park, is that transmission outside of the ground … led us to expand the definition,” he said.

“That means thousands more people are now drawn into this Tier 1 definition and having to isolate for 14 days.

It’s not a decision we make lightly, so when we ask you to isolate for 14 days, and it’s a significant pressure to put on people, we do it for all the right reasons.”

Thursday’s 26 new cases represent Victoria’s highest daily infection number since the state’s second wave last year. However, 24 of the 26 were in quarantine during their infectious period.

There have been 133 community-acquired cases in Victoria since the state’s current outbreaks emerged on July 12.

Mr Weimar said of the 133, 16 had received one dose of vaccine, and five were fully vaccinated.

“What‘s really good to see is that all of those who have been vaccinated, either partially or fully, are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms,” he said.

Seven of Victoria’s new cases on Thursday were linked to Trinity Grammar, while six were linked to Ms Frankie restaurant in Cremorne, in Melbourne’s inner east, visited by the teacher en route to AAMI Park.

A further five cases were linked to St Patrick’s Primary School in Murrumbeena in the city’s southeast, where the index case is a nine-year-old student who caught the virus at the MCG. There were two cases linked to a group of friends who travelled to Phillip Island with an MCG case, and three in other household contacts of MCG cases, including two in Mildura, in Victoria’s far northwest.

A further two cases were linked to a separate cluster of 14 cases across five households with extended family and social links in Melbourne’s outer north.