Surgery to resume in Melbourne, but without visitors

The Andrews government has succumbed to pressure from medical professionals and agreed to allow elective surgery to resume in Melbourne hospitals from Tuesday.

Victorian Acting Premier James Merlino. Picture: Getty Images

The Andrews government has succumbed to pressure from medical professionals and agreed to allow elective surgery to resume in Melbourne hospitals from Tuesday, but hospital ­patients still face an ongoing ban on visits from loved ones due to coronavirus restrictions.

News that there had been no new community-acquired cases of coronavirus in Victoria on Friday also renewed calls for a re­laxation of rules that prevent Victorians from having guests in their homes or driving more than 25km until at least next Thursday.

Health authorities warned that the current outbreak was not over, pointing to recent unlinked clusters and coronavirus detections at four Victorian sewage treatment plants where there are no known active cases.

The decision to allow elective surgery follows calls from patients and medical professionals, who highlighted what they saw as a double standard that has ­allowed Melburnians to go to a ­restaurant or get their nails done, but not have a medical procedure in a sterile environment with ­vaccinated doctors and nurses.

Victoria’s health system has been under great strain in recent months due to delayed treatment as a result of last year’s 112-day lockdown.

Acting Premier James Merlino said allowing metropolitan hospitals to restart their elective surgery lists would “give Victorians certainty they will get the care that they need”. “We will work hard to clear the backlog as quickly as possible,” he added.

Mr Merlino hailed Victoria’s first day with no new coronavirus cases since the first of the current clusters emerged on May 24 as a “terrific outcome”, but warned that the outbreaks are “nowhere near over”. “We cannot be complacent but it is good news to be at zero,” he said.

Amid terrible weather on Thursday, there were 17,604 tests processed in Victoria in the 24 hours to Thursday night, well down from the June 2 record of 57,519. The lower testing numbers come after coronavirus fragments were detected this week in wastewater from Pascoe Vale in Melbourne’s north, and Scoresby and Vermont in the east, as well as in the Bendigo area.

Chief health officer Brett Sutton warned that the state was likely to have more cases of ­community-acquired coronavirus confirmed in coming days.

“The week ahead probably won’t be all zero cases,” Professor Sutton said, warning that it had been less than 48 hours since ­Victoria detected new cases of “uncertain acquisition”.

The source of four cases in a Reservoir household in Melbourne’s north is yet to be identified, with health authorities also still investigating where a Melbourne couple who tested positive in Queensland may have contracted the virus.

Genomic sequencing has confirmed both new clusters are the Kappa strain of the virus and linked to the wider Whittlesea cluster which emerged on May 24 and originated with a man who caught the virus in an Adelaide quarantine hotel before returning to Melbourne on May 4.

Professor Sutton said the source of acquisition for the Reservoir household remained unclear. He also said authorities were investigating the acquisition source for the couple who drove to Queensland.

Victoria was on Friday still yet to list exposure sites for the couple, despite NSW having done so within an hour of Queensland making the first case public on Wednesday.