Coronavirus: Daniel Andrews’ hardest day, until the next

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews during the daily COVID-19 briefing. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Matray

Daniel Andrews looks drained and in genuine emotional pain.

Each day, in a small theatre at the back of his office block in Melbourne’s Treasury Place, the Victorian Premier goes through the lengthy but necessary details of how the pandemic is unfolding.

With staff and media distanced five or six seats apart in the blackened room, he and others talk for the best part of an hour about the hits and misses of the campaign to turn around the infection rates.

These things are hard to measure, but Sunday was probably the hardest and today just reinforced the scope of the challenge ahead.

Appearing somewhat stunned and slightly emotional at the start of Sunday’s press conference, Andrews spat out the ugliness of the numbers.

Ten dead, seven men and three women; 459 new cases.

Today the death toll was six but with a record of 532 new cases, with the workplace at the centre of the crisis.

“It is the biggest driver of transmission,’’ Andrews said.

With every bad day, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the government will hit its target of a six-week lockdown.

This means a quarter of the national economy remains in hibernation for probably weeks more and a steadily climbing death toll after the lockdown began on July 8.

Seventy-seven Victorians have died so far, with the fatality demographic lowering ominously from the 80s and 90s down to the 40s. There are babies (who have survived) among those who have contracted the virus.

An entire city is diminished by the waves of anxiety and exhaustion that come with the COVID-19 territory.

In his 10 years as Victorian ALP leader, Andrews has not had to suffer many losses, just the occasional ministerial and campaigning scandal but nothing terminal.

Tax revenue has poured into Treasury at a seemingly unstoppable rate, population has continued to climb, but now there is an enemy that has stopped the world.

“Things change rapidly,” Andrews said yesterday. “But I think you’d have to say these numbers are far too high.”

There are so many factors feeding into Victoria’s plight.

The cold weather is probably not helping and community transmission is rampant. The community is tired of lockdown and tired of the uncertainty.

Is this the beginning, the middle or the end?