Victoria's Delta outbreak is rapidly spreading across Melbourne, prompting the state government to halve the wait time for second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Key points:
- Contact tracers are still investigating the infection source for 93 of the cases
- New exposure sites have been added across Melbourne and Geelong
- The Victorian government is looking at introducing shorter intervals between AstraZeneca jabs
Victoria recorded 176 new locally acquired COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours, the highest daily increase since late August last year.
Acting Chief Health Officer Ben Cowie said while case numbers in suburbs to the north and west of Melbourne remained high, suburbs in the south and east of the city were now also seeing significant increases in cases.
"There is not one corner of metropolitan Melbourne that is not touched by this virus," Professor Cowie said.
"The geographic spread is the function of a range of things, I think some of it is occupational. There's no question occupational sites are implicated with some of that."
He also said the wider spread of the virus was an inevitability given the increased numbers of positive cases.
In contrast to metropolitan Melbourne, Professor Cowie said there had not been an high rate of community transmission in regional Victoria, which he called "an incredible achievement" for communities in Shepparton and Echuca.
AstraZeneca dose interval halved in bid to accelerate vaccinations
Professor Cowie also announced the interval period for AstraZeneca vaccinations would be reduced from 12 to six weeks in all state-run clinics.
"That matches the dosage interval for the Pfizer vaccine, so it'll be six weeks for AstraZeneca and for Pfizer bookings going forward," Professor Cowie said.
"These changes will be active in the booking system from today."
Professor Cowie also said people who had already received their first dose would be able to rebook their second dose for an earlier date, highlighting that more than 50,000 doses of AstraZeneca were still available for Victorians.
ATAGI released advice on July 13 recommending a shorter interval of between four to eight weeks for the AstraZeneca vaccine in outbreak situations.
Professor Cowie said while research had shown a 12 week interval between AstraZeneca doses provided the best protection, the government was prioritising a higher vaccination rate in line with ATAGI advice.
Professor Cowie said the policy shift would both speed up the vaccination rollout and save more lives in the long run.
ABC News: Simon Tucci
)"The risk-benefit here is clearly in favour of dropping this interval. It’s why New South Wales have done it, it’s why ATAGI has recommended this, and it’s why our own external advisory group to the vaccination program has recommended this change," he said.
New South Wales residents are able to receive their second AstraZeneca dose four weeks after their first.
Eritrean community mourns COVID deaths
Melbourne's Eritrean community is mourning the loss of two of its members.
It was announced on Tuesday, the two Victorian women both died at home with COVID-19.
In a statement sent to the ABC, the Eritrean Community in Australia (ECA) said they were saddened by the loss.
"The whole community mourns. We send out condolences to the families and their loved ones," the statement said.
One of the women, aged in her 40s, is from the Darebin council area and the other woman, aged in her 60s, is from Hume.
The ECA said the community was doing its best to reach out to all members about the risks of the Delta variant and how to best protect their families, but there had been some language barrier issues.
"Some members of the Eritrean community are illiterate in the English language, so information delivered on the news is often not understood," the group said.
The Department of Health said in a statement on Tuesday: "We send our deepest condolences to the families and communities involved – and we will be working with them to give them the support and guidance they need over the coming days."
Outbreaks hit call centre, St Kilda backpackers
Health Minister Martin Foley drew attention to two new areas of concern for health authorities.
Mr Foley said 17 new cases had now been associated with an Acquire call centre, which shares its premises with Healthcare Australia.
Contact tracing is now underway, with all staff who worked at the call centre from August 25 now deemed primary close contacts.
Mr Foley also highlighted Base Backpackers in St Kilda as an area of concern after being listed as a tier 1 exposure site.
One case has been identified at the site and moved into hotel quarantine.
Contact tracers have linked 83 of the state's new cases to existing outbreaks.
Health authorities say more information will be provided later about the number of cases who were in quarantine while infectious.
The state processed 48,372 test results on Wednesday, when state-run clinics administered 33,720 doses of vaccine.
ABC News: Christopher Le Page
)As part of a modest easing of restrictions announced on Wednesday, playgrounds will re-open to children under 12 on Friday, with only one parent or carer allowed to accompany them.
Check-in QR codes were installed at playgrounds across the city as the change took effect.
The deputy director of the Burnet Institute has defended the current lockdown restrictions in Victoria, saying they have prevented a much worse outbreak across the state.
Earlier this week, the Premier said modelling showed the lockdown restrictions in Victoria had prevented 6,000 cases in the current outbreak, and 600 hospitalisations.
Margaret Hellard from the Burnet Institute said the modelling, which came from her organisation's research, was accurate.
"You don't want to have people frightened the whole time, but we do have to understand the impact when the virus runs through the community," Professor Hellard told ABC Radio Melbourne.
"When we bring in restrictions we can see that the likelihood of passing it on to other people comes down."
Victoria's top psychiatrist weighs in on lockdown mental health
Victoria's Chief Psychiatrist Neil Coventry today commented on the suggestion that mental health impacts from lockdowns may outweigh the health risks of the pandemic, calling it "the million-dollar question".
"These are always very difficult decisions to be weighing up but we need to see how connected our physical health and wellbeing is with our mental health and wellbeing."
AAP: Daniel Pockett
)Dr Coventry said while he continually provided advice to the health department, he did not believe he should be present at governmental crisis meetings.
"I don't think I should. I think that would be contaminating the process," he said.
"I'm very confident that the information that I give, my own expertise and the expertise I bring from contact with the field, is being adequately considered."
Dr Coventry also addressed the latest figures on suicide, saying they had not trended in the way experts initially thought they would.
"For reasons we don't know completely, the suicide rate hasn't gone up in the way we predicted and hasn't gone up for young people," Dr Coventry said.
However Dr Coventry said a low suicide rate did not necessarily correlate to a strong mental health picture.
"I would hate for us to focus on just the suicide rate and think 'oh, that's okay. Young people aren't suffering mental health problems'," he said.
"We know there's been a trend, very much predating COVID, of an increase in problems with mental health and wellbeing for young people."
He urged parents to stay aware of their children's mental health and have frank conversations about topics such as stress and anxiety.
Royal Commission into Victoria's COVID response receives backing
Former Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos has backed a royal commission to examine Australia and Victoria's response to the COVID pandemic.
Speaking at a parliamentary inquiry into the closure of a caterer, Ms Mikakos was asked if she still had confidence in Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.
She declined to answer, instead referring to her resignation when she raised concerns about her departmental staff not being fully frank with her.
Ms Mikakos was also pressed on who decided to use private security guards in hotel quarantine.
"There is a need for a thorough examination of the pandemic response by the federal government, by state governments, not just in terms of hotel quarantine, vaccine rollouts, hospital preparedness, and also to look at the lessons to be learned for the future,'' she said.
Opposition continues to push for looser restrictions
The Victorian opposition has demanded the Premier resign if he does not reconsider the small easing of restrictions announced yesterday.
With restrictions set to continue well into October, the Coalition has argued the government should be finding ways to ease some restrictions to give Victorians hope.
"The Premier has two options, reconsider or resign," Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien said.
"That's how badly the Premier got it wrong yesterday. Victorians cannot go on like this, we need a plan to get us out of lockdown, the Premier's only plan is to keep us in lockdown."
The Coalition is calling for rules like the curfew to be scrapped. Mr O'Brien has also pushed for an urgent plan to return all students to the classroom.
Mr Andrews said a return to classroom learning was being considered for regional students, but would not be possible in Melbourne for term 3 due to the transmission risk.
"It's unbalanced, this Premier is still chasing COVID numbers and is forgetting about the mental health impacts of what his lockdown is doing to this state, its not good enough,'' Mr O'Brien said.
"Victorians need hope and they are not getting it from the Premier."
Exposure sites grow across Melbourne and Geelong
More tier 1 exposure sites have been listed across metropolitan Melbourne, with anyone who attended the sites urged to get tested immediately and isolate.
Positive COVID-19 cases attended Base Backpackers hostel in St Kilda, Kasr Sweets in Coolaroo, Broadmeadows Family Health Care in Broadmeadows, and Serco Services Australia in Essendon Fields.
Tier 2 exposure sites have been listed in Altona North, Keilor East, Tarneit, Southbank, Hawthorn, Brunswick East, Sunshine, Elsternwick, Hadfield and Albion.
In wider Victoria, tier 2 sites have been identified in at a Coles, the 7 Origins Café and the Poco Café Express, all in Geelong West.
No new exposure sites were identified in the Greater Shepparton area.
Health professionals blame 'stubbornness' in older cohort
The Prime Minister will send a letter this week to more than half a million Australians aged 60-69 who have not yet recorded a first-dose vaccination.
Around 138,745 Victorians in the age bracket have not yet had a recorded vaccine.
A Werribee GP has expressed his frustration at what he called the "stubbornness" of the cohort of people aged over 60 who have not yet been vaccinated.
Joe Garra said a significant number of his patients in that age group were refusing to get the AstraZeneca vaccine because of blood clot concerns, and were instead waiting for Pfizer to become available.
"There's a hardcore group in their sixties that are just not wanting AstraZeneca and we've tried everything, we've tried explaining the stats to them that if you're over 60 your chance of dying from the vaccine is one in 1.6 million," he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
Dr Garra said the messaging around AstraZeneca had been "terrible" and the vaccine had been publicly questioned by health officials and high-profile doctors, despite the extremely low risk of an adverse reaction.
"The evidence that came out of the UK over the weekend was that [its efficacy] might even last longer than Pfizer, so it looks like it might even be a better vaccine than Pfizer," he said.
Dr Garra said people were also regularly not turning up for Pfizer vaccination appointments, leaving doctors scrambling to administer doses to avoid them going to waste.
Mr Andrews also said yesterday mandatory vaccinations would eventually come into effect for certain workforces such as aged care.
"We will almost certainly mandate in a number of different settings," he said.
"To get to a number that will be higher than 80 per cent, higher than the community vaccination rate, I'm just foreshadowing I think we will have to mandate in a number of those areas but we have to do that respectfully."
Victoria has administered 5,039,494 vaccinations through both state and Commonwealth channels in Victoria as of August 31.
Businesses crushed by reality of extended lockdown
Victorian business owners said Wednesday's state government announcement marked a “day of disappointment”, warning of the long term economic consequences of the lockdown.
Victorian head of the peak employer association Ai Group, Tim Piper, accused the government of dragging its heels on business support, saying the announced reopening of playgrounds was an insufficient reward for struggling business owners.
“Kids back into playgrounds is a positive change," he said.
"But it doesn't create any new economic activity, offer any security for jobs or job creation, help high school and VCE students or young adults."
General manager of the Chapel Street Precinct Association Chrissie Maus echoed Mr Piper’s sentiments, saying Victorian businesses had been given no hope by the government.
"It's only small privileges like playgrounds that are being dangled in front of us. Businesses are begging for some relief. We are not children, it's as though we're all in class detention," she said.
The government said it would have more to say about business support in the next few days.
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