Victoria’s lockdown will be extended

Victoria will stay in lockdown beyond the original five days after recording 12 more cases and exposure sites appearing across the state.

There were 13 new local infections in the 24 hours to this morning (Monday, July 19), one of which is a case in Mildura, previously announced by authorities.

Premier Daniel Andrews said there were too many chains of transmission for the lockdown to lift at the original time of midnight tomorrow (Tuesday, July 20).

“We are running alongside this virus, but we’re not yet in front of it,” he told reporters.

“We’ve gone hard and early and I think we have avoided, in fact I know we have avoided something altogether worse.”

He said testing figures, exposure sites and test results today will guide the extension and he hoped to tell Victorians just how long that will be on tomorrow morning.

Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton said there was concern about a case linked to the Crafty Squire, which hosted an event for the Euro 2021 final.

“It is absolutely an example of how quickly this variant is moving in the short time we are seeing between exposure and then being infectious and onward transmission.

“Previously, last year, we would not have seen any circumstances with someone who had been exposed was transmitting to someone else a day and a half later, less than 48 hours later simply was not seen last year with other variants.

“So while we acted as conservatively as possible in declaring Crafty Squire a high-risk venue, we didn’t necessarily expect there to transmission there. The fact it has occurred some 30 hours after being exposed is absolutely a feature of the Delta variant.”

All the new cases are linked to the current outbreaks of the Delta variant in the state, which originated in NSW.

Victoria also recorded one new infection acquired overseas, currently in hotel quarantine, bringing its total number of active cases to 81.

There are now 15,800 close contacts and more than 250 exposure sites, including sites on Phillip Island in the south of the state to the Mallee district in the northwest.

There were 54,839 test results returned during the 24 hours to Monday and 14,758 vaccines administered.

In the Geelong region, there is one Tier 1 exposure site – the Barwon Heads Football Club (which is also a Tier 2 site). There are three other Tier 2 exposure sites – Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus, the APCO service station in Highton, and the Officeworks store in Waurn Ponds.

For more information, head to the Coronavirus Victoria website.