Victoria records 11 new cases of locally-acquired COVID-19

Victoria has recorded 11 new local cases of COVID-19 as Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton hit out at thousands of lockdown protesters who descended on the CBD on Saturday.

The Health Department said the new locally-acquired cases are all linked to the current outbreaks and were in quarantine throughout their entire infectious period.

There was one new case in hotel quarantine and there are currently 179 cases active in Victoria. Health authorities received 32,385 tests on Saturday, and delivered 17,370 vaccine doses.

As of 8am on Sunday, the Victorian Health Department had not added any new exposure sites overnight, with the most recent venues that were exposed, two tier-2 sites published at about 7.30pm on Saturday, located in Fitzroy and Hawthorn.

On Saturday the signs were promising for an easing of stay-at-home orders at 11.59pm, Tuesday, however with the NSW outbreak getting worse and the continual threat of the more infectious Delta strain, authorities are acting with caution.

On Saturday, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton hit out at thousands of lockdown protesters who descended on the CBD, saying the crowd’s actions were antithetical to the “freedom” they were calling for.

Police and protesters come face to face on Saturday.Credit:Eddie Jim

As the vast majority of Melburnians stayed home for a ninth day on Saturday, thousands flooded the CBD for a three-hour, mask-free rally that ended in six arrests and 74 infringement notices.

What started as a few hundred people grew and grew as the large group snaked in loops around the city’s centre with music, smoke flares and chanting “sack Dan Andrews” and “freedom”.

Professor Sutton said the more important freedom was the ability to live without widespread COVID-19 infections.

“I love freedom. Who doesn’t love freedom? I want freedom from being amongst the over 4 million official (and likely 10 million actual) COVID deaths globally. And freedom from being amongst the over 13 million current active cases. Or millions of current Long COVID cases,” he tweeted.

Over four tweets the Chief Health Officer warned the pandemic was far from over, and outlined the risks of the healthcare system being overwhelmed if lockdowns were stopped.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg also described protests in Melbourne and Sydney against lockdown laws on Saturday as “stupidity writ-large”.

Speaking on Sky News Australia on Sunday morning, Mr Frydenberg said the images of protesters clashing with police were “shocking” and people were rightly concerned about the implications.

“Those protesters should be condemned, for not just breaking the health orders and therefore breaking the law, but for putting in danger their fellow Australians,” he said.

The rebuke came as chair of WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, Dale Fisher, called for large sporting crowds to be banned and indoor masks mandated once Victoria eases out of lockdown.

Professor Fisher, an infectious diseases expert at the National University of Singapore, said politicians needed to stop pretending there’s “no pandemic going on” in between clusters and make some unpopular decisions, instead of bouncing between acting as if there was little threat from the disease and an “imminent catastrophe”.

“The imminent catastrophe is shut businesses, cancel everything, five reasons to leave home.

“And then you’ve got, there’s no pandemic, which is social distancing is not so important, QR codes are if you feel like it. Sure, 30,000 to 50,000 people at a football match all yelling, that’s okay because ‘there’s no COVID around’.”

The infectious Delta variant is proving to be a game-changer for the management of the pandemic, and many Australian experts agree tough conversations will be needed about what level of risk is acceptable to the community if big sporting and other events are to continue.

David Estcourt is a court and general news reporter at The Age.

Rachael Dexter is a reporter for the Sunday Age.

Melissa Cunningham is The Age's health reporter.

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