A Melbourne fruit market has been added to Victoria’s growing list of coronavirus exposure sites – plunging all shoppers into 14-day isolation.
A Covid-infected customer attended Sacca’s Fruit World at Broadmeadows Central in Melbourne’s north between 12.30pm and 1pm on Tuesday February 9.
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has identified the venue as a Tier 1 exposure site – meaning all shoppers who were there over the same time frame must quarantine at home.
‘Anyone who visited here during these times must isolate, test and remain isolated for 14 days,’ DHHS said.
Health authorities have also identified the fresh fruit and meat section to the west side of Broadmeadows Central as a Tier 3 exposure site.
Shoppers who visited that section of the centre between 12.15pm and 1.15pm on February 9 should monitor for symptoms.
Police patrol Bourke St in Melbourne’s CBD on Monday as cafes and retail shops are forced shut
The latest Covid exposure sites comes after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and ABC host Leigh Sales clashed over his five-day statewide lockdown – as just one new locally acquired case of Covid-19 was reported on Monday.
In a heated press conference, Mr Andrews was forced to defend plunging 6.4million Victorian residents into lockdown again after being bombarded with questions from the 7:30 host, who had earlier been refused an interview with the premier.
Ms Sales grilled Mr Andrews on why the lockdown had been initiated with low case numbers and despite the government saying they had confidence in their hotel quarantine systems and contact tracing.
‘Are you going to go into a five-day lockdown every time you have two or three new cases everyday?,’ Ms Sales asked.
‘If you have confidence in the system, which your own bureaucrat just explained frankly is working quite well, why did you lockdown?’
Recent five-day lockdowns in Western Australia and Queensland were only contained to specific areas not the entire state, as is the case in Victoria.
ABC 7:30 host Leigh Sales (pictured) grilled Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews about Victoria’s five-day lockdown at a heated press conference on Monday
Ms Sales took to Twitter to say Mr Andrews had refused an interview with her 7:30 program, so attending his press conference was the ‘next best option’
Ms Sales continued to press Mr Andrews on why Victoria had entered lockdown if contact tracing systems are up to standard, as the government has claimed.
‘What I’m trying to get to is, lockdown imposes a real cost and Victorians have already paid a big price for lockdown. Cases are actually very well traced, so why the lockdown?,’ she said.
Ms Sales said recent cases had been ‘contacts of contacts’ who had been easily identified and demanded to know ‘What’s the circuit that you’re breaking because you’re own expert just made it clear what a good job is being done in terms of containment and tracing?’.
Mr Andrews said Ms Sales had made ‘a number of assertions’ there were not accurate and argued the decision to go into lockdown was based on the public health advice he had been given – which he could not ignore.
‘I’m more than confident in the team we have and in the Victorian community that they can get through this,’ Mr Andrews said.
LEIGH SALES v DAN ANDREWS
Sales: Premier, what do you say today to Victorians who… might be asking how is it the case that the government still lacks such confidence in the hotel quarantine systems and contact tracing that you currently can’t manage two to three cases of Covid a day in a population of about 6.3million people
Andrews: You’ve made a number of assertions there
Sales: They’re all facts actually
Andrews: No they’re not. You’ve just put it to me there’s a lack of confidence. I’m more than confident in the team we have and in the Victorian community that they can get through this. So with the greatest of respect, you have put a number of things to me that are not accurate
Sales: If you have confidence in the system, which your own bureaucrat just explained frankly is working quite well, why did you lockdown?
Andrews: Because the public health advice to me is given the speed at which this moves, given the assumption that has to guide the decision making, much as it would have I’m sure guided decision making to close the Northern Beaches in Sydney, or Perth or Brisbane or Adelaide, where there’s been similar issues coming out of hotel quarantine, the public health advice particularly with this UK strain… close contacts have been infected by the time we became aware of the primary case. That is the definition of something moving fast.
Sales: But the data premier that we were just provided with shows they are contacts of contacts, they were really well identified
Andrews: Not all of them, some of them have come into scope
Sales: They’ve been well identified. It’s a small number of cases. That all suggests that the system is actually working pretty well to contain it, so why the need for lockdown?
Andrews: Well that’s a very different question to the one you asked in the beginning where you contended there all sorts of confidence issues
Sales: You said on the weekend the lockdown was needed because contact tracers could not keep up with the spread of the UK variant which would imply you lack confidence
Andrews: It is not what it implies at all. What it implies and what it states is that this thing is moving really fast. They shouldn’t be taken as a criticism of thousands of people who are working night and day and are pulling this up. I suppose, I’ll put it to you this way, Leigh, if you’re putting it to me I ought to ignore the advice provided by the Chief Health Officer, well, I will not do that. Just like I am sure each and every other Premier who across the country has had to go to these short, sharp measures. They didn’t ignore the advice of their public health team, nor has Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand ignored the advice of her public health team. I really wouldn’t think you would want a situation where for the sake being popular and avoiding the real challenges that are faced by making these sorts of decisions, you ignore that advice, only to be back here in a fortnight answering a whole lot of different questions about why I ignored advice. I just don’t do that.
Sales: What’s the circuit that you’re breaking because you’re own expert just made it clear what a good job is being done in terms of containment and tracing
Andrews: That line of questioning follows that it would be better if there was a heap more cases. It doesn’t makes much sense to me. This is a clear point and I made it literally thousands of times. You have to assume, just like epidemiologists, public health experts and political leaders across the globe, you have to assume there are more cases out there then you know about because if you assume otherwise, and you are proven wrong, then there is no going back. There is no do over, you don’t get to go well, I just get to rewind these few weeks and make the decision that the officials told me to make, that I refuse to make
Sales: So are you going to go into a five-day lockdown every time you have two or three new cases everyday?
Andrews: We will look at every positive case on its merits. But we will always work as hard as we can to avoid having any statewide measures or any extra rules
Sales: This is going to be hard news for Victorians to take, that two to three cases a day and the system might not be able to handle it, that’s on the table there might be a five-day lockdown every time there’s two or three cases
Andrews: I think it is important to acknowledge that when you use terms like the system it may not be able to handle it. This is not the 2020 virus. This is a very different virus. If you want to look at systems that can’t handle things, well have a look at Europe, have a look at so many parts of the world they are dealing with what happens when this UK strain runs wild. There is no pulling it up. We have seen some encouraging announcements overnight from the Commonwealth government in relation to the vaccine rollout. We look forward to playing our part in that, however we can help, we are there to do the very best we possibly can. When you are so close to having frontline workers and particularly vulnerable Victorians, getting that jab, we have got to hold these settings and protect what we have filled and that is exactly what we have done based on advice and far from I think being criticised for having followed advice and having low case numbers because people are working their guts out and doing a very good job, I think that is a far preferable outcome than having more cases, you always want less
Sales: If snap lockdowns continue to be a tool for a small number of cases, how can Victorian businesses make any regular plans?
Andrews: I think it is just wrong to say they are a tool for a small number of cases as such. I have also made the case that it is on its merits. Anyway, I’m putting it to you that we will always reserve the right to look at individual cases and follow the advice that given to us. And I just don’t think you want, you wouldn’t want it any other way, because the notion, let us make just go back to first intervals here, would you really want me to be shopping around for the best advice? The most politically popular advice? Would you really want me to say gee, that will be incredibly hard to stop I’m not doubting for a moment how hard it is
Sales: What I’m trying to get to is, lockdown imposes a real cost and Victorians have already paid a big price for lockdown. Cases are actually very well traced, so why the lockdown?
Andrews: We have gone through that a number of times. We went out on Friday. Again, the types of cases, this UK strain, the fact that despite the amazing efforts of all of our contact traces and testers and lab workers and the work of so many genuine hard-working Victorians, we had a situation where at the same time as we are becoming aware of the primary case, they have already infected the close contact, that is not something we’ve seen before. The speed at which this has moved saw our public health team make the very difficult decisions based on the best of science and the best understanding you can possibly have on any outbreak, that this was a difficult but proportionate and necessary thing to do. And look, if at the end of this, the view of you or others was that this was too much, well, you’re free to form those views. What I am not free to do is to ever ignore advice and have a situation where I shop around for whatever will be most popular, only then to be proven wrong and to have not one or two cases, but something much worse than that, and particularly on the cusp of the vaccine being rolled out. I know and appreciate very well what Victorians have been able to achieve. There is no other jurisdiction in the world that has been able to achieve what we achieved, it is a credit to the character, compassion and the absolute determination of the Victorian community. We know what to do and I’m grateful that we know that that is exactly what Victorians are doing, coming forward to getting tested, coming forward and listening to the advice and following the rules, and also when they are asked to make that incredibly difficult, the challenging thing to do, to stay at home for 14 days on the chance that you may have it, to do that at such high levels, it is a credit to every single Victorian
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) defended plunging the entire state into a snap five-day lockdown, as one new locally acquired case of Covid-19 was recorded on Monday
Melburnians line up to be tested for Covid 19 in Melbourne on Monday amid Victoria’s five-day lockdown
The exchange came as Mr Andrews refused to rule out whether the lockdown will end on Wednesday.
‘I’m not in a position to be able to confirm that but I can say that thanks to the hard work of those Victorians who are coming forward and getting tested,’ he said.
‘I think we are well placed. However, I’ve never been one to try and make bold predictions.’
The new locally acquired case on Monday is a woman who attended a family function in Coburg, Melbourne’s north, with a Covid-infected hotel quarantine worker on February 6.
The woman is asymptomatic and was tested four times at the weekend, returning both negative and ‘weak positive’ results.
‘Given her exposure and the variability of those results, the public health team have taken the most conservative approach and have deemed her a positive case,’ Mr Andrews said.
He said the woman worked in a psychiatric unit at the Alfred Hospital and on psychiatric wards at the Northern Hospital in Broadmeadows, which is run by Royal Melbourne Hospital.
There were large queues for Covid-19 testing sites in Melbourne on Monday. More than 25,000 tests were processed in the 24 hours to midnight on Sunday
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) said: ‘We will look at every positive case on its merits. But we will always work as hard as we can to avoid having any statewide measures or any extra rules’
Some 17 people linked to the Melbourne Airport Holiday Inn have tested positive for Covid-19
‘Those services have had those wards locked down. Staff, all those that she may have come in contact with, they are all isolating and have been tested,’ Mr Andrews said.
‘This has been a very rapid response and one that is filled with an abundance of caution but that is exactly the approach that we ought to take.’
Victoria’s Covid-19 Testing Commander Jereon Weimar said 150 primary close contacts across the two hospitals have been identified.
‘The majority are staff at those facilities, a very small number of patients,’ he said.
The woman is the mother of a three-year-old who tested positive to the virus on Sunday.
Mr Weirmar said the child attended Glenroy Central Kinder and Goodstart Early Learning Centre in Glenroy over three days last week. About 101 primary close contacts have been identified.
The woman and child, as well as another woman aged in her 50s, contracted the virus after attending a family function on Sydney Road in Coburg on February 6.
Melbourne’s popular Queen Victoria Market fruit and vegetable section has been named as a new exposure spot on Thursday February 11 from 8.25am to 10.10am along with the women’s toilets in section two
A Melbourne man outside Flinders Street Station on Valentine’s Day during Victoria’s five-day lockdown
The function was attended by 38 people including a worker from the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel at Melbourne Airport, who had returned a negative test result on February 7.
The venue was not listed as an exposure site until February 12, two days after the hotel quarantine worker eventually tested positive.
A review of the worker’s February 7 test result found it was a ‘false negative’.
Some 17 people linked to the Melbourne Airport Holiday Inn have tested positive for Covid-19.
Four Covid exposure sites were identified by Victorian health authorities on Sunday evening after the state recorded two new local coronavirus cases that day.
Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services said an infectious person caught a tram to Melbourne’s popular Queen Victoria Market on Thursday, February 11.
A picture of Melbourne’s eerily empty streets on Sunday, with the city and the rest of Victoria under lockdown again for five days
The person caught the No.11 tram from Harbour Esplanade/Collins St at 7.55am to the William/Collins St stop at 8.10am, making it the first new exposure site.
They then caught the No. 58 Yarra Tram from the Bourke/William St stop at 8.10am to the Queen Victoria/Peel St stop just before 8.25am.
They went into the Queen Victoria Market fruit and vegetable section and the women’s toilets in section two, making it an exposure site from 8.25am to 10.10am.
The person then caught the No.58 Yarra tram back from the Queen Victoria Market at 9.40am to the Bourke/William St stop at 9.55am making it the fourth exposure site.
Anyone at those locations at the same time as the positive Covid-19 case must immediately isolate for 14 days and get tested.
NEW RESTRICTIONS FOR VICTORIA FROM 11.59PM ON FRIDAY FEB 12
From Friday February 12 at 11.59pm, new rules apply to Victoria for five days until 11.59pm on Wednesday February 17 due to a worrying new outbreak of the UK mutant strain of Covid-19.
- Stage Four lockdown for the entire state
- Only four essential reasons to leave the house – essential shopping, essential work/education, care-giving or two hours of exercise per day
- All residents must stay within 5km of their home other than essential work or shopper
- Outdoor exercise must be with your household, intimate partner or one other person not from your household
- Mandatory masks everywhere except your home
- No visitors to anyone’s home
- All non-essential shops will be closed
- Public gatherings banned
- Work from home
- Schools closed except for vulnerable children
- Places of worship closed
- Weddings banned
- Funerals capped at 10 people
- Community spaces including swimming pools and libraries closed