VICTORIA is facing its biggest battle since the state’s second wave, having recorded fifty-five new local COVID-19 cases, thirty of which have been in the community while infectious.<\/p>\n
Premier Daniel Andrews described Friday, 20 August as a “bad day”.<\/p>\n
He said Government ministers and the public health team would meet this afternoon to determine whether restrictions will need to be tightened further.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just delicate, it’s not a tipping point, we are right on the edge of this getting away from us,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
“It’s not because contact tracing are not doing everything they can, they are, it’s not because we didn’t lock down fast enough, we did.<\/p>\n
“It’s this Delta variant, it’s so wildly infectious it will find every breach of every rule and it will potentially spread because of that.”<\/p>\n
He urged Melburnians to abide by lockdown restrictions, which include five reasons to leave home, a five-kilometre travel limit for exercise and shopping, a 9pm to 5am curfew and mandatory masks both indoors and outdoors.<\/p>\n
Last week saw a spate of breaches including an organised takeaway pub crawl in Richmond and an engagement party in Caulfield North attended by 69 guests.<\/p>\n
“We cannot have a weekend this weekend like last weekend, we must all follow these rules and find it within ourselves to push through this,” Mr Andrews said.<\/p>\n
“I know it’s incredibly difficult, but so is having thousands of people in hospital, and that’s what we are faced with. That is what we will all confront.”<\/p>\n
The health department on Friday confirmed 49 of the locally-acquired cases are linked to known outbreaks, while 25 were self-isolating throughout their infectious period.<\/p>\n
Six cases cannot be linked to known outbreaks, which is of great concern to authorities.<\/p>\n
Two overseas-acquired cases were also detected in hotel quarantine, taking the total number of infections recorded in the state to 57 for the second day in a row.<\/p>\n
It’s expected some of the 55 new infections are the result of day-13 testing of some 2000 people who have been self-isolating after coming into contact with a positive case.<\/p>\n
Among the new infections is a police officer based at Knox station in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and a resident of the regional city of Shepparton, about 200km north of Melbourne.<\/p>\n
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