Health Minister says four of today’s five new locally acquired COVID-19 cases are close contacts of a worker from a large food distribution centre who travelled across Melbourne over a ten-day period.
Victoria s coronavirus lockdown is unnecessary because there are no mystery cases and could have been avoided if the state government had set up a universal QR code check-in system, a diseases expert has told Daily Mail Australia.
Seven million Victorians are being ordered to stay at home in a circuit-breaker lockdown that started on Friday morning as an outbreak in Melbourne grew to 30 cases of the Indian variant of the disease.
But Professor Peter Collignon, of the Australian National University, said short lockdowns impose huge costs and do not help stop the spread of the virus as long as cases and contacts are isolated by a good tracing system.
Health authorities are ready to overhaul the nation’s strategy on the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines to immunise as many adults as possible if the Victorian coronavirus cluster grows.