More than 15,000 younger Victorians have booked in to get their first dose of AstraZeneca after the government opened up state-run hubs to people as young as 18.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the swift uptake shows that the slow rollout of the vaccine in Australia is not about vaccine hesitancy but about lack of supply.
He also lifted lockdown restrictions in regional Victoria after the new cases were contained to the city.
“Some of the hesitancy that we all seem to be talking about is perhaps not as real as we thought it was,” Andrews said. “I reckon there are millions of Victorians that are keen to get vaccinated and are just waiting for the supply to turn up, as am I.”
Victoria recorded 11 new cases on Monday, all of which were linked to existing clusters. One of the new cases was a person who was isolating for the entirety of their infectious period, a trend Andrews says he wants to see increase before a decision is made about whether lockdown in Melbourne will be lifted or extended.
“We need to get down to a very low number of cases, if any, that have been out in the community during their infectious period.,” Andrews said. “That’s when we’ll have the best chance of opening up and staying open.
“The biggest challenge at the moment is this is running wild in other parts of the country and while ever we have some movement that is essential … there will always be some risk that it gets out. That’s why we wish our friends in Sydney all the best: their problem is our problem.”
Andrews said the decision to lift lockdown in regional Victoria was taken after no cases or exposure sites were listed in regional Victoria, and because the outbreak to date has had “a degree of localisation” around a few suburbs in Western Melbourne.
The change means that from Tuesday, students in regional areas can return to school and hospitality venues can open under strict density limits.
But Andrews said he would not reintroduce the “ring of steel” checkpoints to prevent people from Melbourne travelling to the regions, saying it would require too many resources.
“I‘ve got a border to defend between Sydney and NSW and I’m not going to shut half the police stations in Melbourne to do something that Victoria police and the public health team don’t think that we need to do,” he said.
“There should be a ring of steel around Sydney, then we would not have to be defending our border as much as we are.”
He said police would be out in the regions to ensure the rules are followed.
“You won’t be able to buy so much as a litre of milk without establishing that you’re from regional Victoria,” he said.
Seven of the 11 new cases are linked to the Caroline Springs shopping centre, two to the Newport Football club, and one is a student of Al-Taqwa College.
Andrews said Al-Taqwa had done better than any school in the country in informing its community and marshalling them to get tested and isolate.
Eighty-seven percent of the 2,600 primary close contacts at Al-Taqwa College have tested negative to date, as have 88% of the primary close contacts at Warringa Park specialist school, 83% of the 1,934 close contacts of Heathdale Christian College, 75% of the 1,567 at the Islamic College of Melbourne and half of all students and staff at Mt Alexander College.
Victoria’s Covid-19 response commander, Jeroen Weimar, said it was a “stunning” test turnout that was “testament to the leadership of those school communities”.
Almost 9,000 of the 12,738 primary close contacts identified so far in Victoria are staff, students and family members from schools, including a significant number of healthcare workers who have been furloughed.
Victoria’s chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, thanked the Al-Taqwa College community, and the residents of the high rise public housing tower at 130 Racecourse Road in Flemington, both of which were hit hard by Covid outbreaks last year. The public housing towers were among those placed into a heavily policed hard lockdown last July, which the Victorian ombudsman found violated human rights.
The virus was confirmed to have spread to some residents of the public housing towers on Saturday. Sutton said that by the end of the day on Monday, it’s expected more than 90% of the residents in the towers will have been tested.
“No one family, no one individual is to blame for these outbreaks,” Sutton said. “Anyone can get exposed, anyone can get infected, we’ve seen that right through this pandemic. But doing the right thing is critically important and testing and isolating and quarantining when you know that you have to is going to get us through this.”
