Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has confirmed what a lot of people feared: the state-wide lockdown will not be ending tomorrow night as planned.
“We will not be lifting lockdown at midnight tomorrow,” Andrews said on Monday morning.
“We know that if we had been open, we’d be just like Sydney – with hundreds and hundreds of cases. Lifting restrictions now would not be the right thing to do.”
Lockdown number five was intended to lift at midnight on Tuesday, making it a snap five-day lockdown to get ahead of the outbreak.
There is no date set for the current lockdown to lift.
“To [exit now] would not be the right thing to do, it would perhaps be a few days of sunshine but then we’d be back in lockdown again,” Andrews said.
He promised to provide an update on the lockdown length tomorrow, after a night of collating the most recent case and testing data.
“It will be a very long night and we will be out tomorrow to see you to give you and all Victorians certainty.”
It comes as the state records 13 new locally acquired cases.
Reported yesterday: 13 new local cases and 1 new case acquired overseas (currently in HQ).
– 14,758 vaccine doses were administered
– 54,839 test results were received
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl1hf3W#COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData pic.twitter.com/j2r9Pz8Ynd— Victorian Department of Health (@VicGovDH) July 18, 2021
All of the cases are linked, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton confirmed, which is just about the only bit of good news.
There was transmission from strangers, including people who had been seated away from each other at sporting events.
Of particular concern for Sutton is a case where a person contracted the virus at Crafty Squire, which hosted a Euro 2020 finals event.
“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,” Sutton said.
“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.”
There are now more than 280 exposure sites listed in Victoria, which you can peep here.
