Victoria records 26 new local COVID-19 cases

WITHIN three days, Victoria has gone from only six per cent of new coronavirus cases isolating while infectious to 92 per cent.

Health Minister Martin Foley revealed the figures in today’s (Thursday, July 22) COVID-19 update, praising Victorians for following the rules of the state’s fifth lockdown.

There were 26 new locally acquired cases of coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, all linked to this outbreak, which originated in NSW and now totals 133 cases.

Of the 26 cases, 24 were in quarantine throughout their entire infectious period.

“Three days ago, some six per cent of the daily cases were isolating for the entirety of their infectious period, yesterday that was 73 per cent and today it is 92 per cent,” Mr Foley said.

“We are doing what we can to limit the movement of people and with the help of all Victorians during this lockdown, and the fact that we have had the Victorian population so supportive of those restrictions of movements, we remain confident that we can still get ahead of this.”

Of the two cases infectious in the community, one connected to Trinity Grammar had only a petrol station in regional Victoria as their only exposure site as they made their way back from East Gippsland to Melbourne to isolate.

The second is connected to the AAMI Park cluster, and visited Prahran Market and Market Lane Coffee last Saturday while infectious before isolating.

Those two locations are now Tier 1 exposure sites and about 900 people had checked into the venues. Anyone who visited the venues at the same time as the case must now get tested and isolate for 14 days.

Authorities praised the case who visited the service station for being as careful as possible when they were notified they were a close contact.

“They immediately travelled back home from regional Victoria into isolation, as required, and they only made that one stop for petrol, had limited contact with staff and even disinfected the credit card that they were using before handing it over,” Acting Chief Health Officer Ben Cowie said.

“These are the types of COVID-safe behaviours that limit the spread of the virus and that keep all of us safe.”

Victorian COVID-19 Commander Jeroen Weimar said the AAMI park case was being interviewed about their exact movements.

“The more detail we can get, if we can make a judgement as we go through to release parts of the market, but at this point in time we are taking a very cautious approach.

“We’ve seen with Delta over the last 11 days, it isn’t about where you’ve spent significant time, it is the brush-past contact.”

Thursday’s numbers are the state’s highest daily total of the current outbreak and follows the 22 cases reported yesterday (Wednesday, July 21).

Four community cases and one international hotel quarantine case are in hospital.

Some 19,000 primary close contacts are self-isolating across the state, while the number of exposure sites has grown to more than 380.

Some 43,674 tests were processed in the 24 hours to this morning, while 14,230 Victorians received a vaccine dose at one of the state-run hubs.