State records 29 new local COVID-19 cases as outbreak spreads to Melbourne public housing tower

Victoria has recorded 29 new local COVID-19 cases, including at least two mystery cases that are driving two chains of transmission in an outbreak that has spread to a Melbourne public housing tower.

Premier Daniel Andrews said on Saturday all the new cases were linked to known outbreaks but were not in quarantine for their infectious periods.

There are at least two mystery cases in the community driving two chains of transmission.Credit:Wayne Taylor

Health authorities “don’t know where those two outbreaks started”, he said.

“We simply can’t work out where they got it from. That means there are at least two other people out there, and potentially more than that, who have the virus and have given the virus to the people that we’re dealing with now, but we can’t identify them as yet,” Mr Andrews said.

“We may never be able to, but we’re all working as hard as we can to find every single case. That relies upon people coming forward and getting tested and doing so really fast.”

There were more than 43,000 tests, and 22,335 vaccinations were administered across the state on Friday. More than 600 of those vaccinations were administered at the Al-Taqwa College pop-up testing site.

“So many of these transmissions, and others that we will find in the coming days, will have been because people were visiting others,” the Premier said. “They shouldn’t have been doing that.”

The Premier would not say if the week-long lockdown would be extended.Credit:Scott McNaughton

Outbreak spreads to Flemington housing tower as exposure list grows

A public housing tower at 130 Racecourse Road in Flemington has been listed as a tier-2 exposure site from August 3-6.

The tower is one of the many blocks across Flemington, North Melbourne and Kensington that was placed under an immediate hard lockdown in July.

Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass found the government’s decision to lock down nine public housing towers in North Melbourne and Flemington with no warning on July 4 violated the human rights of about 3000 tenants.

COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said eight of the new cases were part of a single family household in the Flemington tower which is home to at least 400 people.

“Those eight positive cases relocated two days ago and last night, and they are now in alternative and safe accommodation,” he said.

Residents on the same floor as the family have been designated tier-1 primary close contacts, meaning they must stay in their apartments for 14 days. The rest of the building is considered a tier-2 site, Mr Weimar explained, meaning other residents would all need to be tested and isolate until a negative result.

Abdiqifar Ahmed from not-for-profit organisation AMSSA Youth Connect, which supported the high rise residents in 2020, said his organisation had been preparing for a tower outbreak since new cases were found at Al-Taqwa two days ago.

“There’s at least 10 Al-Taqwa families that live across all the towers,” he said.

AMSSA on Saturday was tracking down exactly where each Al-Taqwa family was to be able to “get a head start” in case more tested positive, in order to support them with culturally appropriate food as well as medical and schooling supplies.

Messaging to public tower residents states that primary close contacts would be relocated “where appropriate”, or supported while they stay in their apartments.

Mr Ahmed said his organisation hoped health authorities would continue to remove positive families if possible to avoid the widespread lockdowns seen last year.

“Obviously comparing to last year it was really terrible because it had a massive toll on so many people. Every single person was locked down irrespective of their status â€" they didn’t take that into consideration,” he said.

“I hope this time around it’s handled more efficiently and affected people are removed, are taken to a safer location. Last time everyone just got locked in and it [the virus] spread more.”

Community Health service Co-health on Saturday established a pop-up testing site outside 130 Racecourse Road, and has been running pop-up vaccine clinics at public housing sites in the north and west for the past six weeks.

High-density public housing residents are a prioritised vaccine group regardless of their age.

Since the tower lockdowns almost one year ago, each high-rise public housing tower in the north and west now has a medical facility and a nurse on-site â€" with 100 residents from different cultural backgrounds employed as “health concierges” to bring tower residents forward to get medical treatment.

Two schools were also added to the exposure-site list on Friday evening and closed for deep cleaning after two students tested positive. Warringa Park specialist school in Hoppers Crossing and Heathdale Christian College are both listed as tier-2 sites.

Another school sent an email to parents on Friday evening saying that health authorities are investigating a positive case who attended the Islamic College of Melbourne in July. All staff, students and visitors of the college are now considered close contacts.

Victoria this week went from zero new cases to another lockdown in just over a day, after a teacher at Al-Taqwa College in Truganina and her husband, who live in the western suburbs, tested positive.

New polling shows that most people believe there is an urgent need to give teachers access to vaccines to reduce the risk of the virus spreading in school communities.

The Australian Medical Association’s Victorian office says that, along with the vaccination of essential workers in areas of the state where there have been outbreaks, residents in areas with high COVID-19 case numbers should also be immunised.

There are fears that much of Melbourne’s north and west is under-vaccinated and at risk, while the regional centre of Bendigo has been vaccinated at a rate far ahead of the state average.

According to figures released this week, 52.6 per cent of eligible people in the Bendigo region have had one vaccination dose, far ahead of the Victorian average of 42.58 per cent and the national average of 41.4 per cent for those aged 16 and over.

The fears over low immunisation rates in parts of Melbourne come as epidemiologists advising the state and federal governments say Victorians will endure more frequent lockdowns until the end of the year because of Sydney’s worsening outbreak and the high infectiousness of the Delta variant of COVID-19.

The most recent modelling of possible outbreak scenarios predicts Victoria could spend at least one in four days under lockdown, while other scenarios predict even more frequent lockdowns will be required to contain the spread of the virus.

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Abbir Dib is a breaking reporter at The Age

Rachael Dexter is a reporter for the Sunday Age.

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