Victoria coronavirus outbreak: ‘Melbourne’s Covid-19 outbreak may get worse before it gets better’

Contact tracers are still no closer to identifying the crossover between Melbourne’s cluster and a man who got the virus in an Adelaide quarantine hotel.

A resident of the Arcare facility in Maidstone, the epicentre of Melbourne’s aged-care outbreak, is taken to an ambulance on Monday. Picture: David Crosling

Victorian officials have not ruled out extending the state’s lockdown beyond seven days.

Acting Premier James Merlino on Monday warned Melbourne’s Covid-19 outbreak “may well get worse before it gets better”.

There were 11 new cases reported in Victoria on Monday – five disclosed in the morning and another six recorded after the midnight disclosure period – with more than 4200 primary contacts and 320 public exposure sites.

Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, said lifting of the lockdown imposed on Thursday to stop the spread of cases was a “day-by-day prospect”.

“With more numbers today coming through and those really concerning settings, especially in aged care, we are neck and neck with this virus and it is an absolute beast,” he said.

Health authorities are particularly concerned about three cases who are believed to have become infectious in and around Melbourne’s northern suburbs for at least 10 days before they were tested, including a staff member at the Slades Beverages factory in Thomastown who worked 11 shifts while likely contagious between May 12 and May 28.

Jeroen Weimar, the state’s Covid-19 testing commander, said contact tracers were “no closer to identifying the crossover” between any of the cluster cases and a man in his 30s from Wollert, also in Melbourne’s north, who contracted the virus in an Adelaide quarantine hotel on May 3 before flying home the following day.

An aged-care resident looks out the window of the Coppin Centre in Melbourne’s Footscray on Monday. Picture: Tony Gough

When news of the Wollert man’s case broke on May 11, Victoria’s health department deemed him to have developed symptoms on May 8, and therefore have been infectious from May 6.

They consequently did not publish exposure sites relating to his movements on May 4 and 5, and issued conflicting information over whether those who had been on his flight from Adelaide needed to be tested.

But Mr Weimar said officials were “continuing to go back and look at all the movements of our Wollert case, and that’s ... a key line of our ongoing investigation”.

“At this point … I’m not looking at anything that says we’ve missed a trick,” he said. “I am concerned, of course, that we haven’t as yet got that crossover point.

“We think there is somebody out there who did have contact with the Wollert man who then subsequently had contact with others in the clusters we’re now seeing. We’ll continue to search for that person.”

A lone pedestrian on Princes Bridge in Melbourne on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

Mr Weimar named Indiagate Spices & Groceries in Epping, visited by the Wollert man on May 8 and a subsequent case on May 19, as being among a number of small stores of interest to contact tracers.

However, he said the 11-day gap between the two visits to Indiagate indicated there had not been a direct crossover. “We are still looking in that kind of space to see where else these crossovers might be,” he said.

Professor Sutton, asked about an extended lockdown for Melbourne, did not rule out the imposition of a new “ring of steel” restricting travel to the regions.

“It will be determined as we go through a review of the situation day by day; it is not out of the question,” he said.

The lockdown has confined Victorians to their homes unless they are shopping, in authorised work or education, giving care, exercising, or at a medical appointment. Shopping and exercise must happen within 5km of home.

Some epidemiologists, including World Health Organisation adviser Marylouise McLaws, said they did not expect the lockdown to finish on Friday as originally planned. “It has to go certainly for 14 days,” Professor McLaws said.

Cleaning at Arcare Maidstone on Monday. Picture: David Crosling

The latest Covid-19 outbreak on Monday closed three Melbourne schools – Methodist Ladies College in Kew, Mercy College in Coburg North and Willmott Park Primary in Craigieburn – with three possible cases linked with them who are household contacts of a confirmed case.

Prisoners at the Metropolitan Remand Centre in Ravenhall, in the city’s outer west, were also confined to their cells after a staff member was feared to have attended a high-risk exposure site.

Among the recent unlinked cases is a partially vaccinated aged care worker who has so far infected a resident and a fellow worker at the Arcare aged care facility in the western Melbourne suburb of Maidstone, as well as her son.

The second worker had worked for three days last week at a second facility, BlueCross in nearby Sunshine, prompting a lockdown at that centre and two others.

Mr Merlino warned that the challenge presented by the growing number of cases was a “very, very significant one”.

“The next few days remain critical, and I want to be really clear with everyone that this outbreak may well get worse before it gets better,” he said.