Daniel Andrews won’t rule out longer coronavirus lockdown

Daniel Andrews has refused to rule out extending Victoria’s ‘short, sharp’ lockdown beyond the planned five days, saying it is too early to make a decision.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in Melbourne on Monday Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Daniel Andrews has refused to rule out extending Victoria’s “short, sharp” lockdown beyond the planned five days, saying it is too early to make a decision on whether to keep people in their homes beyond 11.59pm on Wednesday.

The Premier also signalled more snap lockdowns could be on the cards should similar coronavirus clusters emerge, as the number of cases linked to the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport reached 17, with 150 close contacts of the latest case identified across three mental health facilities.

More than 100 close contacts at a kindergarten and a childcare facility and 400 contacts from two swimming pools in Melbourne’s northwest were also being urgently traced on Monday, after the latest case’s three-year-old tested positive for the virus over the weekend.

The mother and child were among 38 people — seven of whom have so far tested positive — who attended a private function in Coburg, in Melbourne’s north, on Saturday, February 6, at which a Holiday Inn food and beverage attendant who tested positive for the virus on February 10 was present.

With more than 1000 close contacts isolating and the virus yet to present in anyone with more than one degree of separation from people who spent time on the third floor of the Holiday Inn, where the virus is believed to have been transmitted from a family of three on February 3 and 4, Mr Andrews said it was “too early” to say whether the lockdown would be eased on Wednesday.

“It’s too early to make a definitive prediction about Wednesday evening, but that will become more and more certain today and tomorrow and as we get results on Wednesday morning,” he said.

The latest lockdown — with daily case numbers for the past week averaging 1.3 — contrasts with those imposed amid Victoria’s second wave of coronavirus.

Mr Andrews implemented stage-three, stay-at-home orders on residents of greater Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire as cases reached 191 a day, with a seven-day average of 102.3 on July 7, almost six weeks after the virus had escaped hotel quarantine.

It was not until August 2 — when there were 672 cases and a seven-day average of 518.4 — that the entire state went into the same stage-four restrictions Mr Andrews announced last Friday.

Mr Andrews denied the latest lockdown implied a lack of confidence in Victoria’s hotel quar­antine and contact-tracing capabilities. “That’s not what it implies at all. What it implies and what it actually states is that this thing is moving really fast,” he said. Asked whether Victorians could expect to go into lockdown every time a handful of cases ­escape hotel quarantine, he said each scenario would be treated “on its merits”.

“If you want me to ignore the advice provided by the Chief Health Officer, well, I will not do that,” he said.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said every cluster would be treated on a “case-by-case basis”, citing the government’s decision not to impose a lockdown as a result of a single case in a hotel quarantine worker at the Grand Hyatt Australian Open quarantine hotel a fortnight ago.

“Other jurisdictions have done that, and I’m not at all critical, but we have managed a case who has been out to dozens of exposure sites because we wrapped up that public health response around it,” Professor Sutton said.

“But if we saw, like Auckland is seeing, a community cluster of three cases, no clear link back to where it is from, any potential for many other people to be lost in the chain of transmission, we would consider that differently.”

The Australian has confirmed contact tracers wasted time contacting hundreds of people wrongly classified as having visited Melbourne Airport’s terminal 4 last Tuesday, when an ­infectious woman was working a shift at the terminal’s Brunetti cafe between 4.45am and 1.15pm.

People who passed through the terminal hours after the exposure period and those who arrived at other terminals were told they must isolate. An 18-year-old man received one such message on Friday evening, having flown to Melbourne from Cairns around 10.30pm on July 9. It was not until Sunday that the man received a call telling him the isolation order had been lifted.