Many reasons for us not be cheerful

Neither Health Minister Martin Foley, left, nor chief health officer Brett Sutton looked especially confident in Melbourne on Monday. Picture: Ian Currie

This is a grave test for a state government that failed on so many levels during the second wave.

At the risk of catastrophising, few with deep knowledge of what went wrong will have much faith that a third wave can be averted.

There was, perversely, much parochial goodwill for the Andrews government as it fought to stem the outbreak that struck last winter. It is hard to see that goodwill spreading into any third wave.

Of course we haven’t got there yet and if NSW is the benchmark then the outcome will be positive.

But the Victorian government has been streets behind its northern neighbour on the crucial question of contact tracing. We learnt from 2020 not to make assumptions about how people react, and the Morrison government also finds itself in crocodile country.

The vaccination rollout has been too slow and the rhetoric from both the Victorian Health Minister and chief health officer was subtle but pointed. The vaccine distribution and take-up has been lethargic.

There are multiple concerning aspects of these four northern suburbs cases. First, we don’t know whether the virus has been silently spreading through Melbourne’s north for many days.

Second, there are unique geographical and sociological reasons to be concerned about the spread. This is not the relatively tightly contained northern beaches in Sydney. It is an open expanse of outer suburbia where work is insecure and the car is a preferred mode of transport.

This means that if the virus has spread, it can go a long way, very quickly, as people scoot around the suburbs to work in factories, aged-car homes and meatworks. Further, it shares the same multicultural characteristics that made it difficult for the health sector to communicate messages in 2020.

The broader picture is that after months of no community transmission, the people of Melbourne have become increasingly slack when dealing with the virus’s implications.

Add to this the rather hopeless Victorian QR system, which is still a work in progress, and it’s hard to feel anything other than a deep sense of dread about how this will all end up.

Neither Health Minister Martin Foley nor chief health officer Brett Sutton looked especially confident on Monday. Both were understandably dented by the news of the four cases. “We never know what’s around the corner,” Sutton lamented. “We should never be complacent.”

Yet that is exactly where Victoria has been this autumn: still bumbling about with a substandard QR system; looking on as eligible people refused to receive a vaccine that might save their lives.

Perhaps worse, the state government was exposed recently by this newspaper as having a relentlessly underwhelming hotel quarantine system while Canberra dithered about taking it out of the major cities.

The best that can be hoped for is that the government rises, phoenix-like, above its previous incompetence before another raging viral bushfire takes hold.

Victorian Minister for Health, Martin Foley and the Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton announce an outbreak of COVID-19 in the City of Whittlesea. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Ian Currie