Source: ABCnews
Victoria has recorded 71 new local COVID-19 cases, the highest daily increase in its recent Delta outbreak.
Of the new cases, 49 have been linked to known outbreaks.
Health authorities have not revealed how many were in quarantine while infectious.
But the majority of new cases recorded on Thursday, Friday and Saturday were not in quarantine while infectious.
The new cases were identified from 46,446 test results received yesterday, and there were 22,191 doses of vaccine administered at state-run sites.
On Sunday, Health Minister Martin Foley said he believed the state was “still in the realm of hauling this back”, despite the growing outbreak in Shepparton.LIVE UPDATES: Read our blog for the latest news on the COVID-19 pandemic
Hundreds of workers from the Royal Melbourne Hospital have been furloughed after an outbreak there, which authorities believe stemmed from a Shepparton man who visited the hospital for surgery.
Victoria urged to consider a ‘bridge’ to higher vaccinations if lockdown fails
University of Melbourne epidemiologist Tony Blakely has urged the Victorian community to start a conversation now about its options if the lockdown was not successful.
Professor Blakely said he still hoped the state would successfully drive the outbreak back down to five or fewer daily new cases by September 2, when the lockdown was due to end.
“And I strongly support the Victorian government’s strong stance to give it a really good push for two weeks,” he told ABC News Breakfast.
But he said if the state was unable to drive the Delta outbreak back down, one option could be relaxing to a “soft lockdown” with fewer restrictions on workers, more time allowed outdoors and an abandonment of the curfew.
“Based on my initial calculations, what would happen is case numbers would go up, and then you’d catch them about October and then they’d come back down again as the vaccination coverage is going up,” he said.
“And it looks plausible that you could catch it at about 400 cases per day.
“I know that doesn’t sound great, but you could catch it then and then bring it down and therefore you would be in a soft lockdown until November, whatever that looks like.”
Professor Blakely said that might enable a “tidy bridge” over to the point in time when vaccination coverage was higher.
“I think we need a week as a civil society to start chatting about these things,” he said.
Professor Blakely said despite the hardship caused by Victoria’s sixth lockdown, there was cause for optimism about the end of the year.
“I reckon Christmas can be good because I reckon by Christmas, if we can shake a leg, there’s no reason why we can’t have vaccinated all children by then, before the end of school,” he said.
“So I don’t see why we can’t get to 80 per cent of all five-plus-year-olds, all schoolchildren and older vaccinated by Christmas.
“If we get to that it’ll be a pretty damn good Christmas.”
