Regional tourism operators in Victoria are anxiously waiting for confirmation that Melbourne residents will be allowed to travel this weekend, as authorities try to track down and test every occupant of a 100-unit inner-city townhouse complex after two residents tested positive.
The Victorian health minister, Martin Foley, said the state was on track to ease restrictions this week despite the apparent transmission of the virus at the Southbank townhouse complex, which is home to a man who tested positive on Friday afternoon.
A worker at Arcare Maidstone, who tested positive earlier in the outbreak, also lives in the complex.
Foley said the Arcare employee has been in hotel quarantine since testing positive but appeared to have transmitted the virus to their neighbour before that date, through the use of shared facilities.
“There was reason to believe … that there are two possible exposure sites around a small number of internal facilities,” Foley said. “Discussions with those people, and the genomic sequencing, has confirmed those links.”
Public health teams had sent a text message to all residents and were knocking on doors at the address on Monday. A pop-up testing site has also been set up nearby. Foley said the complex has a number of entrances, so some residents will only be asked to isolate until they produce a negative test while others will be required to isolate for the full 14 days.
Victoria recorded two positive cases on Monday, both children who were close contacts of existing cases and were already isolating. One was connected to the Southbank case, the other the family in Reservoir.
That is a “relatively positive” result, said Foley, and meant that “potential further measures [to ease restrictions] would still be on track”.
“We have run down these last few chains of transmission,” he said. “Because the worst outcome would be to see cases missed.”
He said the promised step-down in restrictions would be announced as soon as possible, but would not name a day.
“What we want to make sure is that we give certainty as quickly and as comprehensively as we can based on the most up-to-date public health advice,” he said. “As soon as we’re in a position to do that, we certainly will.”
Regional tourism operators have asked for restrictions that may apply over the winter school holidays, which begin on 26 June, to be announced as soon as possible.
That is particularly important for the alpine resorts in Victoria’s north-east region, which have experienced strong early snowfalls.
“The alpine were closed all winter last year,” Tourism North East CEO Bess Nolan-Cook said. “It’s so important that they are allowed to welcome visitors back this year and have a great season.”
Nolan-Cook said the north-east was quiet over the Queen’s birthday long weekend, with Melbourne residents not allowed to travel more than 25km from their homes.
“We are about three hours’ drive from Melbourne so long weekends are incredibly important to tourism in our region,” she said. “The majority of our visitors do come from Melbourne, so it has had an impact.”
The pandemic is estimated to have cost the north-east economy $700m in lost tourism dollars, Nolan-Cook said.
Meanwhile in the Grampians, visitors from nearby regional cities of Bendigo and Warrnambool filled bookings cancelled by Melbourne visitors. Grampians Tourism CEO Mark Sleeman said that provided businesses were given enough notice, they would be able to fill bookings for the school holidays with regional customers if Melbourne’s travel restrictions were to continue.
“We love having Melbourne people here but I am not too concerned,” Sleeman said.
He said uncertainty around state borders has prompted some people to cancel a planned trip up north and instead look closer to home.
“We have connected with a whole new market who might otherwise have been going overseas,” he said. “We have 650,000 people who are within 1.5 hours of the Grampians who love coming to visit.”
Sleeman said the first half of 2021 had been the busiest months on record in the Grampians. “For a lot of businesses they have picked up the slack of what they have lost last year, and the last few months have been very positive,” he said. “I don’t know that I would have guessed that in December.”
