The Victorian government has announced a seven-day lockdown today in a bid to curb the state’s growing coronavirus outbreak.
Key points:
The state’s outbreak has now reached 26 cases, with 11 new cases recorded overnight.
One of the cases is now in intensive care in hospital and on a ventilator.
Health Minister Martin Foley said the person in ICU was “an elderly person” who was among the earlier cases in the outbreak.
“We send our best wishes to that family and we send our prayers for a quick recovery,” he said.
“My understanding is that just in recent days we’ve passed over 50 per cent of over-70-year-olds being vaccinated. Sadly this was not one of those 50 per cent.”
Acting Premier James Merlino said contact tracers had identified 10,000 primary and secondary contacts linked to the outbreak.
The circuit-breaker lockdown will be in place until 11:59pm on June 3.
Mr Merlino said there would be only five reasons people would be allowed to leave their homes:
Schools will close for the duration of the lockdown, but childcare and kindergartens will be open.
Mr Merlino, whose main portfolio has been education, said he had instructed his department to set tomorrow aside as a pupil-free day to help schools prepare for remote learning next week.
Victorian COVID-19 snapshot
Updated 3:15pm May 27, 2021
Find the latest information on the Victorian government website.
Cafes and restaurants can offer take-away only, and public and private gatherings will not be allowed.
People will have to restrict their exercise and shopping to within 5 kilometres of their homes, and masks must be worn everywhere outside of the home unless a person has an exemption.
No visitors will be allowed other than intimate partners.
A full list of the restrictions can be found on the government’s website.
Concern that virus strain could become ‘uncontrollable’
Mr Merlino said the virus was spreading at an alarming rate, prompting the lockdown.
“In the last day, we’ve seen more evidence that we’re dealing with a highly infectious strain of the virus, a variant of concern which is running faster than we have ever recorded,” he said.
“The time between catching the virus and passing it on is tighter than ever so for some of those cases I’ve mentioned … the serial interval, that is, how long it takes between the onset of symptoms in the first and secondary case, is averaging just over a day.
“So unless something drastic happens, this will becoming increasingly uncontrollable.”
Here’s what you need to know about Victoria’s COVID outbreak:
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, said it was “very reassuring” that all of the newly-diagnosed cases are linked.
“We know where transmission occurred,” he said.
“There’s the workplace that’s been identified and all of the others are the related households and casual links for the City of Whittlesea outbreak.
“So that’s very reassuring, that’s great work again of contact tracing, but it’s also about people giving very detailed information about where they’ve been so that we can make those links appropriately.”