Vow to get Victoria open as Covid-19 cases rocket

Daniel Andrews has pledged to find ‘a way to push through and get this place open’, despite a massive surge in Victoria’s Covid case numbers.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in Melbourne on Thursday. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Daniel Andrews has pledged to find “a way to push through and get this place open”, despite a massive surge in Victoria’s Covid case numbers that saw Wednesday’s record of 950 swamped by 1438 new cases on Thursday.

While the Victorian Premier refused to rule out having to revise his reopening road map should a further escalation in cases overwhelm the state’s already struggling health system, he vowed that Victoria was “not turning back” in seeking to reopen as scheduled when the 70 and 80 per cent vaccination targets were met.

Mr Andrews attributed at least 500 extra cases in Thursday’s number to illegal household gatherings held on the AFL grand final long weekend, maintaining that while he was “not trying to blame anyone”, case numbers “go up faster if people are out visiting each other in their homes”.

Asked whether he could rule out having to revise his road map should the health system become swamped, he said: “I have never ruled that out. There is no crystal ball with this.”

However, he said there was “no turning back now” in terms of the state moving towards reopening. “We are finding a way to push through and get this place open. We’ve got to do it,” he said.

The increase in cases came as the major supermarkets pleaded with the Andrews government to revise isolation protocol for fully vaccinated casual contacts of Covid cases, warning the furloughing of staff could see dozens of stores forced to close as early as this weekend.

Business groups, meanwhile, called on the government to honour its road map, saying a lockdown-battered Victoria needed hope and certainty to recover.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy called on Mr Andrews to take responsibility for the state’s health system already being in crisis — with widespread ambulance ramping at major hospitals as well as waiting times of up to 12 minutes for triple-0 calls to be answered earlier this week.

“The Premier has been in his job for seven years. He was the health minister for four years as well. For 11 of the last 15 years, he is the person who’s run the health system in Victoria,” Mr Guy said.

“We’ve all known this moment would come to reopen and there would be more cases. If our hospital system is not ready now, questions need to be asked why?”

The Burnet Institute modelling on which the Andrews government has based its reopening road map predicts hospitalisations will peak at between 1950 and 4400, including between 462 and 953 ­patients in ICU.

On Thursday, 398 people were in Victorian hospitals with coronavirus; 83 were in intensive care, of whom 57 were on ventilators.

Covid logistics chief Jeroen Weimar on Thursday warned that if the jump in case numbers proved to be a trend, “we will jump to the worst of those Burnet predictions”.

While Victoria’s case numbers have outstripped those of NSW on a per capita basis, slightly higher vaccination rates in Victoria now compared with the NSW peak on September 11 appear to correlate with fewer deaths and hospitalisations. Victoria’s 1438 cases on Thursday are the per capita equivalent of 1758 cases in NSW, compared with the actual peak in NSW on September 11 of 1599 local cases.

At the time, NSW had a single-dose vaccination rate of 78.1 per cent, with 45.6 per cent fully vaccinated, compared with Victoria’s rate on Thursday of 80.1 per cent single and 49.8 double-dosed.

There had been 170 deaths in the NSW outbreak to September 11, compared with 41 in Victoria as of Thursday.

These included five deaths reported on Thursday, all in Melbourne’s north.