JUNE 30, 2020 \ STARWEEKLY.COM.AU
Lockdown could return Tate Papworth Premier Daniel Andrews has threatened to impose a stay at home order on virus hotspots. Last week Keilor Downs, Sunshine West and Albanvale were identiied by the government as areas with growing outbreaks. With a further 49 cases detected across the state on Sunday, the Premier warned a return to tighter restrictions may be needed. “If we have to further limit movement in some of those suburbs, for instance a stay at home order much like we all as a community had to endure for what felt like the longest of times, if that is deemed the appropriate public health response, then that is what we will do,” Mr Andrews said. As of Sunday night there were 29 active cases within the municipality, taking Brimbank’s all time total to 111, second only to Hume (118). One of Sunday’s cases was a close contact of a known case in the Brimbank family outbreak, taking that total to six, while a new case was linked to the outbreak at the Coles Chilled Distribution Centre in Laverton, taking the total to four. he cases at Coles are part of the Keilor Downs family outbreak, which has 21 identiied cases. In a bid to quell the spread of the virus across the three hotspot suburbs, the government launched a testing blitz last week. he blitz continued over the weekend, with testers going door-to-door testing residents, regardless of whether they are showing symptoms. Over 40,000 tests were carried out over the weekend and while Mr Andrews said the number of positive tests was “concerning”, the country’s deputy chief medical oicer Michael Kidd stopped short of calling it a second wave. “As expected, this widespread testing continues to identify further cases and this is allowing us to identify those who are infected and to follow their contacts in order to move rapidly to contain the outbreak.” “What we are seeing happening in Victoria is exactly what was planned when we have outbreaks occurring across the country with the immediate increase in the testing, the activation of the contact tracing to identify individuals who have been in contact with infected people and the very rapid action to get people into isolation and quarantine.”
COVID-19 testing has been set up at Melbourne Showgrounds as part of a testing blitz. (Damjan Janevski) 210340_08
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