'You can't lock down five million people in Melbourne because you have a certain number of healthcare workers who are contracting COVID-19,' says epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett.
Victoria's stubborn tail of coronavirus cases should not prevent Premier Daniel Andrews considering reopening the state after next weekend, a number of leading epidemiologists have said, because it was largely healthcare and aged care workers now getting sick.
Of Victoria's 2060 active cases on Friday, 993 were related to aged care and 297 were among healthcare workers – between them about 63 per cent of the total. In response, the state government announced that, from late on Friday it had started asymptomatic testing in the COVID-19 wards of hospitals. All staff would be tested weekly for six weeks even if they displayed no symptoms, a spokeswoman said.
Professor Bennett and Professor McCaw both estimated Victoria would still be recording up to 50 or 60 cases per day as the original stage four period expired on September 13 – a number Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton described on Friday as the "stubborn tail of the epidemic curve", and has said was too high to loosen restrictions.
He said he had been in favour of a move to stage four last month, which included an 8pm curfew and five-kilometre limit on movement, because VictoriansOn the possibility of reopening, he said: "There is no obvious answer to this question. You have to be very careful because loosening those restrictions could still pose a risk when outbreaks occur ...
"A really big thing here is mask-fitting for health workers. Aerosols are a major way COVID-19 spreads, where it can sneak around the side of masks," he said. "The system design is also important, so ensuring workers aren't coming into unnecessary contact with each other. It seems we've fixed that up in places like distribution centres, where visitors like truck drivers arrive at certain times and leave quickly. We need to refine that kind of approach in hospital settings.
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