The Victorian government has recorded five new COVID-19 cases, bringing the state’s current epidemic to 70 cases during the fourth lockdown in the Australian state.
As Melbourne entered the second week of the strict blockade, authorities examined virus samples and genomic sequences nationwide to determine how families in Victoria were infected with the deltacoronavirus strain.
The number of local cases increased by four on Friday, three of which are related to households in the western part of the city.
It is not yet clear whether the latest case reported on Saturday morning is associated with the Delta strain.
Health officials are reviewing quarantine types and cases related to maritime, airline and diplomatic travelers amid concerns that devastating variants in India and the United Kingdom could spread throughout the community. I will.
The Delta subspecies, the “cousin” of the kappa strain that caused the rest of the current outbreak in Melbourne, has not yet been hospitalized locally.
Currently, there are 366 sites that may have been infected with the virus.
The latest exposure locations to be added are Costco in Docklands from 3 pm to 4:30 pm on May 30 and Collins Street 55, an office building in CBD, Melbourne, on May 25. Confirmed cases attended all day.
State Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton told reporters Friday that the Delta strain was not associated with any other case of the current epidemic.
Sutton said the B1.617.2 variant has a “very high potential for infection”, with little information about the severity of the disease it causes, but an anecdote that it causes more serious illness in children. There is a typical report.
Genome sequencing of two families in western Melbourne revealed that they were infected with the Delta variant.
It is unknown how a family member who traveled to Jervis Bay in NSW was infected with the virus, but the possibility of being infected with the virus on an interstate highway has not been ruled out.
The family has more than 300 close contacts, many of whom are enrolled at North Melbourne Elementary School, and authorities suspect that there was an infection between two fifth-grade students at the school.
Some of the close contacts also lived in public housing towers, which became an important focus in Melbourne’s second lockdown a year ago.
On Friday, the Ministry of Health said there were eight cases of accidental contact infections and five exposure sites where the virus infected people who did not know each other.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth of Nations and Victoria have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly fund a dedicated COVID-19 quarantine facility in Melbourne.
The location has not yet been determined, but it is understood that the federal government prefers locations near Avalon.
Acting Prime Minister James Merlino said on Friday that he would help Victoria meet the growing demand for vaccines.
The state wants to double the dose of AstraZeneca available to general practitioners and provide an additional 100,000 Pfizer doses to public vaccination sites from mid-June.
Andy Yu