Australian Reports of the Virus Spread

[RooFlyer]

Chief Health Officer : our concern right now is for the two girls welfare and mental health who are just doing what kids do at that age.

... like sneezing without covering mouth, share drinks and food, and all the rest of it, I guess. Hey it was just a lark! ... says the CHO

 

[Lynda2475]

The Indian repatriation flight into Melbourne 2 days ago would appear to not to have generated a high number of hq cases

With the airlines now being made responsible for testing - passengers check into airline nominated hotel 72 hours before flight and are tested there by airline organised lab - it has greatly reduced the ability for faked tests or infection on route.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

The earlier Indian Qantas repatriation flights also used a Qantas nominated lab. However it was shown to not be a good lab.

So it is more that a non dodgey lab is now being used, rather than Qantas nominating it.

 

[bcworld]

The earlier Indian Qantas repatriation flights also used a Qantas nominated lab. However it was shown to not be a good lab.

So it is more that a non dodgey lab is now being used, rather than Qantas nominating it.

The 'dodgy' lab was the one that generated the 70 postive tests though right? So I don't think it's a case that that lab was handing out false negatives, more that it had lost its accreditation and therefore should not have been used.

 

[Lynda2475]

Yes there was a lab issue (but that was about false positives, not negatives). The flight on 15th that used problematic lab incorrectly denied a lot of people boarding, but only 1 positive was found once those who did fly were tested at Howard springs.

What has changed from the resumption of repatriation flights is the requirement to be tested by that lab whilst you stay and iso at a nominated hotel for 72 hours in the city of departure.

Previously you could get a test in your home town (possibly even bribe that local lab for the result) then travel for 3 days picking up an infection on route and board flight with a negative result that was given before that cross country jaunt.

Now they have greater (not 100% due to hotel ventilation) certainty that you wont be infected after the test as you are iso in hotel for the whole 72 hours before the flight, not mixing with locals.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

All new cases linked.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

From The Age:

11.52am

Victorian system far more robust - Cheng​

It’s hard to overlook how different the response to Victoria’s current outbreak is in comparison to what we saw in the early stages of the state’s second wave last year.

There were 56,624 coronavirus tests conducted yesterday, a daily record. And while this time last year it was unclear if we’d ever have an effective vaccine, yesterday there were almost 22,000 vaccine doses administered by state clinics, another daily record.

Health editor Aisha Dow spoke to Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng this morning, who reflected on the immense progress that had been made in the past 12-months.

CREDIT:MATT GOLDING

Professor Cheng said there was no way the Victorian system could have coped with more than 50,000 tests last year.
And he said that more than 99 per cent of these tests were still being returned within a day.

Another key change was the introduction of a “second ring” of contact tracing, he said, where contacts of confirmed cases are also sent into isolation – an achievement made possible by improved contact tracing being led by local public health units.

“I think the other thing is about community engagement,” Professor Cheng said. “All the various ethnic groups have been involved. There’s a lot of community meetings and forums, trying to make sure we are getting the message out to everyone.”

Professor Cheng revealed this morning that all cases linked to the current outbreak, now at 35 confirmed infections, had been linked to known cases, although of concern, some of them had been out in the community while likely infectious.

Compare this to June last year, when analysis from The Age revealed there were 42 mystery cases in the space of a week, and Professor Cheng then said it would be a “pretty big job” to get the growing outbreak under control


PS. Presumably .that is all cases linked apart from Case 5, the current first case in this cluster, with no known link yet back to the Wollert Man.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Vic Presser.

Still at 5 new cases from yesterday. All linked. No additional ones after midnight as yet.

Minister Foley indicated that more supply is coming into the GP Channel and reminding people to use it.


Case 16 (delivery driver) directly linked to Case 5.

4 new cases today linked to Case 16. One is a student at Mt Ridley College.

Fifth is linked to Straton Finance.


New cases again are ones found by contact tracing.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Just on that some cases have had rapid transmission in this latest Victorian Cluster which involves the new Indian Variant.

Victoria’s acting premier, James Merlino, noted on Thursday that the serial interval – the time between successive Covid-19 cases – has dropped from a usual five to six days down to as little as one day.​

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Such rapid transmission has not been recorded elsewhere in the world, Paterson says. (Dr Beverley Paterson at the University)​

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“That changes everything,” she says. “In Australia, where we have so few cases, it’s like a real-world experiment … you can track an exposure.”​

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Bad luck or bad management: why has Victoria had so many Covid outbreaks?

Medical experts explain how much quarantine breaches, cold weather and pure chance contribute to the spread of coronavirus cases in Melbourne

www.theguardian.com

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The other clusters that some had mentioned in Australia as having one day transmission have as far as I can see are one case where it was two days, and another where over 6 days, case 1 infected case 2 who then infected case 3 over a 6 day period. How quick Case 1 infected Case 2 does not seem to have been defined, and so may not be known.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

And on the original source of this cluster, it now seems it was another person in quarantine, and thus two breaches, and not one, in SA HQ led to Wollert Man becoming infected.

SA Health authorities reveal the person who likely spread coronavirus to a Melbourne man had shared a room with another positive case. ​

It has been revealed that the person suspected of giving COVID-19 to the man at the centre of Victoria’s outbreak was sharing a room with an infected person who was moved to a dedicated facility, Tom's Court Hotel, for coronavirus patients.​

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SA Health authorities said the person was a "friend" and was not deemed high-risk enough to also be transferred to the dedicated facility.​

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The person, who later tested positive to the virus, was instead moved to room in the Playford medi-hotel which was adjacent to the Wollert man.​

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A report released on Wednesday found the virus was likely transmitted between that person and the Victorian man when they opened their doors to collect food.​

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South Australian authorities have now changed their policy to move close contacts of positive cases to a separate part of the medi-hotel, but not the dedicated facility.​

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South Australian COVID-19 leak likely a result of ventilation issue, experts say

An official report found no apparent link to ventilation and the coronavirus transmission, but experts say the facts tell a different story.

www.smh.com.au

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If so, that means that not only was there a HQ breach to the Wollert Man, but that the person who infected him should not have been at that particular HQ in the first place.

How one could deem that someone who had shared a room with a positive case as not to be quite likely to become infected was a surprising decision.

 

[Pushka]

And on the original source of this cluster, it now seems it was another person in quarantine, and thus two breaches, and not one, in SA HQ led to Wollert Man becoming infected.

SA Health authorities reveal the person who likely spread coronavirus to a Melbourne man had shared a room with another positive case. ​

It has been revealed that the person suspected of giving COVID-19 to the man at the centre of Victoria’s outbreak was sharing a room with an infected person who was moved to a dedicated facility, Tom's Court Hotel, for coronavirus patients.​

​

SA Health authorities said the person was a "friend" and was not deemed high-risk enough to also be transferred to the dedicated facility.​

​

The person, who later tested positive to the virus, was instead moved to room in the Playford medi-hotel which was adjacent to the Wollert man.​

​

A report released on Wednesday found the virus was likely transmitted between that person and the Victorian man when they opened their doors to collect food.​

​

South Australian authorities have now changed their policy to move close contacts of positive cases to a separate part of the medi-hotel, but not the dedicated facility.​

​

​

South Australian COVID-19 leak likely a result of ventilation issue, experts say

An official report found no apparent link to ventilation and the coronavirus transmission, but experts say the facts tell a different story.

www.smh.com.au

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If so, that means that not only was there a HQ breach to the Wollert Man, but that the person who infected him should not have been at that particular HQ in the first place.

How one could deem that someone who had shared a room with a positive case as not to be quite likely to become infected was a surprising decision.

This was explained in press conferences this week and a deliberate decision was made not to send them to the Tom Court. So in that situation it isn’t regarded as a breach. However Id suspect it’s regarded as a very poor decision.

 

[jakeseven7]

This was explained in press conferences this week and a deliberate decision was made not to send them to the Tom Court. So in that situation it isn’t regarded as a breach. However Id suspect it’s regarded as a very poor decision.

You THINK?! This SA government created mess makes the pizzagate and bordergate messes look professional!

 

[33kft]

What's interesting is that the AMA were on the radio 2 days ago saying that an investigation of the SA breach found that everything was per standards and couldn't have been avoided, but I fail to reconcile that with the fact that the Vic govt were absolutely slammed over suggesting that a guy with a nebulizer had contributed to spread within HQ because he'd caught it off someone else down a hallway (which never precluded him from spreading it further, which is exactly what is alleged - to another 3 people in fact), yet here we have someone sharing a room with a positive case who was left in SA's non-positive and low risk HQ and again spreads it down a hallway and this time it's unavoidable?

I'm not at all interested in the state vs state bs which is pedaled by certain people on here but I also think there's a great imbalance in how things are reported. Either we shelve this blame game altogether or we apply it uniformly, I would think?

 

[dajop]

What's interesting is that the AMA were on the radio 2 days ago saying that an investigation of the SA breach found that everything was per standards and couldn't have been avoided, but I fail to reconcile that with the fact that the Vic govt were absolutely slammed over suggesting that a guy with a nebulizer had contributed to spread within HQ because he'd caught it off someone else down a hallway (which never precluded him from spreading it further, which is exactly what is alleged - to another 3 people in fact), yet here we have someone sharing a room with a positive case who was left in SA's non-positive and low risk HQ and again spreads it down a hallway and this time it's unavoidable?

I'm not at all interested in the state vs state bs which is pedaled by certain people on here but I also think there's a great imbalance in how things are reported. Either we shelve this blame game altogether or we apply it uniformly, I would think?

We're not allowed to discuss the reasons for this on AFF. But it's pretty easy to understand why, and why the media are selective in reporting dramatising issues in some states and not others.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

We're not allowed to discuss the reasons for this on AFF. But it's pretty easy to understand why, and why the media are selective in reporting dramatising issues in some states and not others.

Anyway back on the issue you raised of how much "luck" is a factor in any outbreak.

So, so far in this outbreak it had a person "0" who should not have been in the HQ they were in due to sharing a room with a known positive, who the positive infects. They are then moved near to Wallan Man who then infects Wallan Man evidently via a corridor due to inadequate ventilation at the HQ.

Presumably Wallan man infects Mystery Person who then infects a super-spreader in Case 5 who while being symptomatic for 12 days does not present for testing till tapped on the should by the contact tracing. In that period Case 5 starts multiple transmission chains.

If Case 5 had of presented for testing off his on bat the outbreak would have been smaller, and potentially much smaller.

If Case 5 had of been vaccinated as he had been eligible, most of the outbreak may well have not occurred as well.

If "0" had of been in the higher grade facility as they should have been then Wallan Man would not have his new nick name, and not outbreak at all.

James McCaw, a professor of mathematical biology at the University of Melbourne, says chance is a dominant factor, because there is a huge amount of variability in how many people an individual infected with Covid-19 spreads the virus to.​

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In the early stages of an outbreak, the virus has a distinct pattern of spread known as clustered transmission, which is highly unpredictable.​

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An estimated 70% of infected individuals do not pass the virus on to anybody else, and research has shown that around 20% of people – so-called “super-spreaders” – are responsible for the vast majority of viral transmission.​

 

[nutwood]

There's an interesting omission in the various border closure announcements. The words I'm looking for and not seeing are "Essential travellers and those who are fully vaccinated." It appears that it doesn't matter that you've done the right thing and had the jabs. If your timing is unlucky and you're caught the wrong side of a border... Tough luck!

 

[Must...Fly!]

There's an interesting omission in the various border closure announcements. The words I'm looking for and not seeing are "Essential travellers and those who are fully vaccinated." It appears that it doesn't matter that you've done the right thing and had the jabs. If your timing is unlucky and you're caught the wrong side of a border... Tough luck!

If everyone had the chance to get a jab I would be behind this 100%. As it stands now, it's too early for a policy like that

 

[clifford]

If everyone had the chance to get a jab I would be behind this 100%. As it stands now, it's too early for a policy like that

Yes, it would certainly put younger adults at a disadvantage.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

The Vic DHHS Daily Report is below.

Given what is contained on the five high-risk exposure sites at nightclubs and bars:

For these five sites, the Department now identifies 506 Primary Close Contacts, and we thank everyone who has come forward in the last 24 hours. Results were received for 17 per cent of these contacts as of this morning.​

I will be keenly awaiting tomorrow morning the tests results for presumably most of the 83% Primary Close Contacts for these 5 sites.




Extract from Vic DHHS Daily Media release
29 May 2021

Victoria was notified of seven new cases of coronavirus yesterday. Five are locally acquired cases linked to the current outbreak.
This brings the total number of locally acquired cases in the current outbreak to 35.

There were two reported cases in returned international travellers in hotel quarantine. They are a man aged in his 30s and a woman aged in her 20s. One of the cases is an aircrew member.

There is one COVID-19 case in hospital in Victoria.

The total number of confirmed cases in Victoria since the beginning of the pandemic is 20,587.
Circuit breaker restrictions are now in force in Victoria.
You can view more than a dozen pages of questions and answers for what these restrictions mean for you at COVIDSafe Settings.

Update: Outbreaks​

The five new cases linked to the City of Whittlesea and Port Melbourne Workplace outbreaks are two men aged in their 30s, a woman aged in her 40s, a woman aged in her 30s and a male child.

Extensive contact tracing continues for all the individuals who have tested positive to COVID-19 and new public exposures sites are being identified.

As of this morning, the Department had identified more than 3000 primary close contacts, of which 63 per cent have already tested negative to COVID-19.

Multiple high-risk exposure sites have been identified including grocery stores in the northern and southern suburbs and a car wash. Significant contact tracing work is underway to identify all those linked to these sites.

People in Epping, Wollert, Dandenong, Craigieburn and several nearby suburbs will receive text messages today advising them to check the Department’s website for the latest information about these exposure sites and to take appropriate public health actions.

Today, COVID-19 Commander Jeroen Weimar updated the public on progress at key sites of concern.

All tests have been returned relating to the Port Melbourne workplace exposure site, with no further positive tests recorded.

At Kidstuff Highpoint, 100 per cent of contacts have returned a negative result, with 70 to 80 per cent of negative test results returned so far for the remaining four retail shops listed as exposure sites.

The AFL, MCC and Marvel Stadium – who had prepared in multiple simulations – have been effective partners in contact tracing efforts, providing ticketing information instantly and CCTV footage to further investigate the movements of two positive cases attending football games.

While the bulk of the affected stands were published as Tier 2 exposure sites, the people sitting in the immediate vicinity of those cases were treated as Tier 1 Primary Close Contacts.

70 per cent of these contacts at the MCG have to date returned a negative result, and 75 per cent at Marvel Stadium. The remaining test results have not yet been received.

Yesterday, the Department advised of five high-risk exposure sites at nightclubs and bars:

• Three Monkeys Prahran
• Somewhere Bar Prahran
• The Sporting Globe in Mordialloc
• The Palace Hotel in South Melbourne
• The Local, Port Melbourne

For these five sites, the Department now identifies 506 Primary Close Contacts, and we thank everyone who has come forward in the last 24 hours. Results were received for 17 per cent of these contacts as of this morning.

There are now more than 150 public exposure sites in Victoria published at Case alerts - public exposure sites.

New exposure sites are being added to the website as interviews are conducted with positive cases.

It is important that Victorians review this webpage regularly and if they have been at an exposure site on the listed dates and times, they must isolate, get tested and contact the Department of Health.

Close contacts are also contacted by public health officials as they are identified and provided with instructions to isolate and get tested.
The Department is continuing to publish exposure sites online at Case alerts - public exposure sites.

We are grateful at the number of people who are checking in on this website regularly – because exposure sites are added throughout the day once investigations are finalised and details can change based on new information and intelligence at hand.

The Department also manages a number of exposure sites which it doesn’t publish online, particularly if these sites represent lower-risk exposures, or if they have comprehensive record keeping and contact tracing measures in place, or if they identify small, private locations.

This includes a school – Mount Ridley College in Craigieburn – and an early learning centre linked to positive cases announced today.

The Department of Education and Training is working closely with the school, and the Principal has written to the school community.
If you are part of this school community, the Department will contact you if there are any actions you need to take beyond getting tested if you have symptoms.

The Department also thanks Coles for its cooperation in contact tracing and testing efforts regarding a lower-risk Tier 2 exposure site at Coles Tooronga Village on 23 May. This is now being published online out of an abundance of caution.

The Department is also upgrading a Tier 2 exposure site in Mickleham (Botanical Display Homes, Botanical Display Village, 23-25 Poppy St, Mickleham) to a Tier 1 site as it investigates likely transmission inside this site.

The Department had already worked with the company to ensure all contacts were getting tested and isolating – and these contacts will now be required to stay in isolation for 14 days following their exposure.

Department of Health and Human Services Victoria | Coronavirus update for Victoria - 29 May 2021

Victoria was notified of seven new cases of coronavirus yesterday.

www.dhhs.vic.gov.au

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Just on test rates, in Victoria yesterday based on the current population the test rate would be 56,624 tests / 6.606 million people.

Population of Victoria 2024

So a testing rate of 857 tests/100,000 people was achieved yesterday.