Fears of not enough testing in nation’s ground zero

Brimbank surges through 600 active cases, making it the most dangerous area in Australia for coronavirus.

A drive-through testing centre in Broadmeadows, Melbourne, on Wednesday. Picture: Aaron Francis

Residents of Australia’s coronavirus pandemic ground zero have fallen well behind testing levels of other local government areas that have suffered sharply fewer cases.

Brimbank, near Melbourne Airport, has surged through 600 active cases for the first time, making it the most dangerous area in Australia to live during the second Victorian wave.

But new statistics obtained by The Australian show that Brimbank, which accounts for almost one in 10 of all Victorian COVID-19 infections this year, sits at sixth on the top-10 testing list across Victoria.

This raises serious questions about how far the virus might have spread in Melbourne’s northwest and west.

It comes as Victoria recorded nine more deaths and 295 new coronavirus cases, while NSW registered 19 new cases and Queensland three.

Brimbank has more than triple the active cases of Casey, in the city’s outer southeast, but has recorded nearly 20,000 fewer tests, while the inner-city enclave of Moreland has fewer than half the active cases but more than 17,000 extra tests compared with Brimbank.

Brimbank mayor Georgina Papafotiou told The Australian there was a significant communication issue in her local government area, where 166 different languages were spoken.

Ms Papafotiou said the state Department of Health and Human Services had sent information on the virus in only 55 languages, and in any case many residents also were illiterate in their native tongues.

She said there also were issues with people not wearing masks or social distancing properly. “It’s devastating what’s happening in our community,” she said.

Victorian health officials have for the first time broken down the number of tests conducted on people across all the state’s LGAs. Some people may have had more than one test.

The results show that five other districts have recorded more tests than Brimbank, with nearby Hume — with 392 active cases — doing at least 22,000 more tests than Brimbank.

Casey has only 186 active cases but has conducted just a shade under 70,000 tests, compared with Brimbank’s 50,384 and Hume’s 72,881.

This is the first time since the pandemic began that Victoria’s DHHS has released the details of where all the people who have been tested live.

The data relates to the number of tests taken up to Monday, ­according to the LGA where the person tested lives. There have been more than 1.5 million tests conducted in Victoria so far.

State Coalition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier said she was seriously concerned about the Victorian testing regimen. “We need to understand the real rate of community transmission,” she said. “We could have a much higher rate of positive cases.”

But the Victorian government said extensive work had been done in Brimbank, where there were seven coronavirus testing sites and extensive community engagement.

“We’re working closely with multicultural and multifaith community groups, social services and local councils to ensure people from all backgrounds understand the symptoms to look out for and where to get tested,” a government spokeswoman said.

“This approach has been designed­ to be flexible, so we can target areas and community groups where it’s most needed — based on up-to-date epidemiological data.”

Brimbank now has one in every eight active coronavirus case in Victoria and nearby Wyndham has one in nine.

There have been 8962 virus cases in Victoria this year and 1838 come from the two local government areas that span across Melbourne’s west and northwest.

Both areas are highly multicultural with a mix of aspirational, welfare and low-income earners. Wyndham, which is in one of Australia’s fastest growth areas, has recorded 61,731 tests.

There have been more coronavirus deaths in Victoria than the rest of Australia combined, with the state’s death toll reaching 92 on Wednesday, including 49 from aged care, and is likely to climb further as the aged-care crisis­ ­gathers momentum.

While there is tentative evidence of improvement in the overall position there, the aged-care sector remains a profound worry for the state and federal governments. COVID-19 has killed 84 Australians outside Victoria, with the national toll at 176.

Federal Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy warned Victorians to brace for many more coronavirus deaths at aged-care homes.

Professor Murphy said the virus had an inevit­able outcome: “We will see deaths every day and that is a tragedy. This virus, once it gets into many frail elderly people­, has an inevitable fatal outcome in some cases.”