A snap lockdown of at least days was heavily rumoured last night after the number of cases linked to two separate COVID-19 clusters rose to 11. They included a Bacchus Marsh teacher who caught the virus after spending time with a friend who lives in the locked-down Maribyrnong apartment building at the centre of the outbreak.
A man in his 30s also became infected after visiting the same Coles store as a member of the Hume household cluster who failed to comply with self-isolation requirements. In response, several states imposed new restrictions on Victorian travellers in response to the outbreak.
This morning, the Victorian Department of Health reported another 10 local covid infections over the past 24 hours. However, all were recorded by the media late yesterday:
Reported yesterday: 10 new local cases and no new cases acquired overseas.
– 15,161 vaccine doses were administered
– 27,061 test results were received
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl1hf3W#COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData [1/2] pic.twitter.com/1otg5WIzZW— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) July 14, 2021
This means there are not yet any new COVID cases recorded today.
Accordingly, the Victorian Government has backed away from announcing another lockdown, instead choosing restrictions on mask use and home visitors:
The Andrews government has opted to hold off on locking down Victoria today, after 11 cases linked to two incursions from NSW were detected.
State cabinet and health officials met long into the night on Wednesday, with the Health Department issuing a late night mask mandate for all public indoor spaces from midnight.
Following a national cabinet agreement that lockdowns would be a last resort, the government has opted to tighten density limits in public spaces and and impose caps on household visits rather than impose what would be the state’s fifth lockdown.
That said, Monash University Associate Professor James Trauer told Sunrise this morning that a Melbourne lockdown is still on the cards:
“It seems likely. We have seen increasing cases over the last few days, more exposure sites every day and we know that if we go early with lockdowns, the earlier we go, the shorter they need to be. We need to get on top of this and we still don’t really understand the scale of the number of cases that have been created at the moment. I would really support an early lockdown.”
A lot will hinge on this afternoon’s numbers.
