Jeroen Weimar in full rather than one selected sentence.
Outbreak’s behaviour has changed: Weimar
By Kate Rose, The Age
COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar has highlighted the different pattern of transmission in this outbreak compared to previous ones, emphasising the reduced interactions prior to positive tests.
In the past, he said, the benchmark was 15 minutes minimum of close indoor contact and outbreaks usually spread from superspreader events.
So we have eight cases at five different public exposure sites and I think as I’ve, as we’ve discussed in the last few days, each of these outbreaks that we’ve seen over the last 12 months and solving the ones we’ve been dealing with over this last year and the end of last year, they all have their own profile, or dynamic or have their own characteristics,” Mr Weimar said.
“Like the Black Rock one which focused around a restaurant, a gathering in a restaurant that was a super spreader event that seeded out, followed by household transmission. With a Holiday Inn, we have again a super spreader event at a private party venue and again followed on by household transmission.
“This particular outbreak at the moment, insofar as we have it right now, what is typifying it is, of course, there’s a lot of household contacts, some business and social contact, we remember the workplace at Stratton finance, but also these eight cases of casual contact, where people didn’t know each other, were not aware of encountering each other, and the transmission of COVID.
“So we’re not saying it’s massively different but we are saying there’s a feature and a dynamic of this bigger outbreak.”
Mr Weimar said Victoria’s 477,000 tests over the past week were providing invaluable information about the spread, and urged people to keep getting tested.
“That’s exactly what we need to see if we’re going to be ... together as a community and we’re very pleased about that and it gives us more intelligence, and ultimately more confidence about how these outbreaks are going.”
Regional Victoria will be waking up to eased restrictions, as Melbourne faces at least one more week of lockdown despite the reclassification of two cases of fleeting transmission as false positives.
www.theage.com.au
And from the ABC:
So 8 out of 65 cases have stemmed from very casual contact (previously poorly referred to as "stranger" cases). Also exposure in these casual cases has often been less in a limited duration of under 15 minutes. Hence the fleeting reference used in recent days.
This ease of transmission in this proportion has not been a feature in the previous outbreaks where transmission from brief exposure was rare, and moreso transmission where there was not a direct communication or fixed proximity link was even rarer.
Cases like those Berala BWS or Butcher club the brief interchanges were aware of the person that they caught the virus from, and they had a direct interaction with them.