Victorian lockdown fails to check coronavirus surge

A Melbourne LGA has seen 122 cases in two days, despite being home to postcodes included in a lockdown three weeks ago.

The cover-up begins in Melbourne, with people at the junction of Flinders and Swanston streets wearing face masks on Thursday. Picture: Wayne Taylor

One Melbourne local government area has recorded a net increase of 122 coronavirus cases in just two days, despite being home to three postcodes included in a stage-three lockdown of hotspots three weeks ago.

Illustrating the challenge the Andrews government is facing, as the fortnight-old whole-of-Melbourne lockdown fails to prevent transmissions, Brimbank, in Melbourne’s outer west, now has ­almost 10 times the 49 active cases it had when it went into stage-three lockdown on July 2.

A week later, when the rest of Melbourne went into lockdown, this had risen to 75, before more than doubling to 180 by July 16.

By Thursday, Brimbank’s tally of active cases had more than doubled again, to 411, including a net increase of 53 on Thursday, and 69 on Wednesday.

Brimbank neighbours the Somerville Retail Services abattoir in Tottenham, linked to 72 cases, and is home to the JBS abattoir in Brooklyn, linked to 58 cases, and the Estia Health aged-care home in Ardeer, linked to 67 cases.

As it has for several days, Thursday‘s local government area data continued to show the most significant increase in cases occurring in Melbourne’s outer suburbs.

All 31 metropolitan Melbourne LGAs have at least 12 active cases, while the Mitchell Shire, which is also part of the stage-three lockdown, has 11.

There are now 113 active cases in regional Victoria outside the lockdown zone, across 20 LGAs, up from 14 active cases across six LGAs on July 9.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on Thursday issued a plea to young people to do all they could to stop spreading the virus, as his office released hospitalisation figures from Tuesday showing that of 36 people in intensive care with the virus that day, two were in their 20s, two in their 30s, five in their 40s and seven in their 50s.

A child under nine and three people aged between 10 and 19 were also in hospital with the virus.

On Thursday, there were 201 people in Victorian hospitals with COVID-19, of whom 40 were in intensive care.

“I’m not singling younger people out for the purposes of blame, I’m just, it is a significant part of our new cases, and there’s no getting around that,” Mr Andrews said. “There are a lot of young people who have died of this in other parts of the world.”

The five deaths in Victoria from COVID-19 in the 24 hours to Thursday included a man in his 50s and a man in his 70s who were not aged-care residents, and a woman in her 70s, a man in his 80s and a man in his 90s who had been residents of St Basil’s Homes for the Aged in Fawkner, in Melbourne’s north.

As of Thursday, Victoria had 3630 active cases of COVID-19, representing an almost tenfold increase since July 1, when there were 370 active cases.

The state has now had 853 cases of COVID-19 since July 1 where contact tracers have been unable to identify a source of transmission, and 1154 since the pandemic began.

In a bid to try to reduce the spread of coronavirus among vulnerable communities and frontline workers, the Andrews government will from Friday distribute two million reusable face masks to these groups over the next six weeks. The move comes after masks became mandatory on Thursday for anyone leaving their homes in Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire.