Younger Victorians race to get COVID-19 vaccine

YOUNGER Victorians have flooded state vaccination hubs on the first day of AstraZeneca being made available to those aged under 40.

With the state in its sixth lockdown and the latest coronavirus outbreak racking up another 20 infections, 2,366 first doses of AstraZeneca were administered yesterday (Monday, August 9).

“That is a more than threefold increase when compared to the Monday of the previous week,” Health Minister Martin Foley told reporters today (Tuesday, August 10).

“Young people are coming forward to get vaccinated, they’re doing it for their local community, sporting clubs, their cultural organisations, they’re doing it for their workplaces and they’re doing it because they want to get to a COVID normal world as rapidly as we possibly can.”

There are now 76 cases connected to the latest outbreak and 111 active infections in the state in total.

All 20 new cases are connected to known outbreaks, but only five were in isolation during their infectious period.

The state government is opening more pop-up testing sites near exposures sites.

It comes as regional Victoria came out of lockdown at midnight, given no exposure sites or COVID-19 cases have been detected outside of Melbourne.

A number of restrictions remain in place for the regions, including a ban on home visits and compulsory mask-wearing both indoors and outdoors.

City dwellers trying to flee Melbourne and head to regional areas will face fines upwards of $5000, as about 200 police are deployed to main and back roads across the state.

Businesses that are open in regional Victoria but closed in Melbourne, such as restaurants and beauty salons, must check the IDs of customers.

Meanwhile in Melbourne, there are more than 12,000 close contacts of infected cases self-isolating and almost 250 exposure sites.

Mr Foley said it was still too early to say whether lockdown could end as planned at 8pm on Thursday this week.