Victorian-era COVID outbreak worsens as authorities ‘very concerned’ over south-east Melbourne

The Victoria Delta outbreak continued to spread to new parts of Melbourne and the rest of the state, with growing concern over the city’s southeast.

The number of cases continued to skyrocket, with a record 1,488 infections reported in testing on Friday and 1,220 in testing on Saturday.

The health department reported this morning 1,377 new test cases processed on Sunday.

In recent days, the geography of the virus has grown from a concentration in northern and western Melbourne to more pockets of the city – a pattern largely attributed to banned domestic gatherings.

Of the 1,220 infections reported on Sunday in Saturday’s testing, 497 were from the northern suburbs and 361 from the west.

There have been 236 reported infections in the southeast, centered around suburbs like Keysborough, Frankston and Pakenham.

“It’s really devastating to see these numbers increase,” said Rhonda Stuart of Monash Health.

Professor Stuart was one of many health and community leaders at Palm Plaza in Dandenong on Sunday afternoon, where a pop-up vaccination center is currently operating.

The clinic is one of 10 centers administering a share of 100,000 Moderna mRNA vaccines as of today, alongside Pfizer and AstraZeneca injections.

“As most of us know, the number of cases is increasing at an alarming rate, so getting vaccinated is very important,” said Mehan Siva of the local Sri Lankan Tamil community.

Throughout the deployment of the vaccine, there was a correlation with lower socioeconomic status and lower vaccination rates, and there were logistical barriers for many to access their shots.

This trend is slowly changing as people gain more access to vaccines.

Greater Dandenong City previously lagged in immunization doses, but has seen a sharp increase in recent weeks, along with other hard-hit local government areas like Hume and Whittlesea.

Andrew Gai, representing the South Sudanese community and the Association of Refugee Communities of Australia, said his message to locals was: “Now is not the time to debate whether to to be vaccinated or not.

“Now is the time to find out where to get the vaccine,” he said.

COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said in the southeast, as in other parts of Melbourne, there was a high attack rate of the virus within households, meaning that all residents would likely be infected.

Second, there was household-to-household transmission, often within family and close friendship groups, Weimar said.

He said “a fair distribution” was finally tied to social gatherings over the long weekend.

“Because what is being done is to go from a smaller number of zip codes to a larger set of locations, and that is what is really concerning.”

As infections increased, an extensive contact tracing system began notifying COVID-positive patients in sensitive areas via text message, a movement met with anger by some health professionals.

Mr Weimar said there had been a “somewhat encouraging trend in the western suburbs” as vaccination rates had increased, with the growth rate now “quite modest”.

But he said authorities were “very concerned” about the southeast and were focusing on the Victoria area, where more than 400 infections are now active.

“So we will continue to be very anxious in all of these places. Obviously what we are looking for in the coming weeks is to see this ripple effect of the higher levels of vaccination from the first dose and from the next dose. second dose that start to slow down reduce the spread, ”he said.

But he said people also had to “hang on to these behaviors” such as staying home and getting tested.

“The numbers that we will see over the next week will be based on the behaviors that we have all participated in over the next few days,” he said.

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