Victoria has recorded a 24th consecutive day with no new COVID-19 cases, and the state now has no active cases for the first time since February.
An elderly couple were the last remaining COVID-19 patients from the state’s second wave of infections. The man in his 90s was discharged from Monash Medical Centre on yesterday after recovering from illness, whereas his wife left hospital several days earlier:
From the Herald-Sun:
For the first time in 300 days, Victoria has no active coronavirus cases and the state’s hospitals are completely COVID-19 free…
It is the first time Victoria has not had a coronavirus patient in hospital since February 21…
Since then, another 20,344 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Victoria, including 2485 who were admitted to hospital. For Monash Health chief executive Andrew Stripp, seeing the last patient leave in good health underscored the effort of all Victorians…
“It’s extraordinary efforts of the community to get to so many days of double zero.”
As shown in the next chart, Victoria’s active COVID-19 infections peaked at 7880 on 11 August:
Thus, eliminating the virus after 16 weeks of hard lockdown has been a marathon effort.
Now the focus must shift to hotel quarantine. Because with the virus almost eliminated across Australia, further outbreaks can only arise if it is imported into the community from abroad through quarantine breaches.
Australia’s authorities must put all their focus and resources into this area. We cannot repeat Victoria’s mistakes that seeded the second wave.
