On Wednesday 11:50 pm local time, 10 postcode areas in Victoria will return to stage 3 “Stay at Home” until July 29, Premier Daniel Andrews announced in a daily press briefing on Tuesday.
What does this mean? People who live in one of the so-called "hot zones" can only go out for food and supplies, care and caregiving, exercise, and study or work -- if they can’t do it from home, and the Victorian police will be “actively enforcing these suburban lockdowns.”
Andrews was told in a briefing that “at least a significant number and potentially more” of the outbreaks in the north of the city are attributable to “staff members in hotel quarantine breaching well-known, well-understood infection control protocol,” he said.
He would not elaborate further on the details of those breaches, but said he will have a former judge conduct an inquiry into those infection control protocol breaches.
Andrews said when there’s a spike in cases, they “literally leave no stone unturned to try and answer the riddle,” using genomic sequencing as an important tool to provide answers on the linkages between cases that are not always apparent through contact tracing.
Last Friday, Victoria announced that it would launch a targeted blitz for testing, allowing residents in 10 suburbs to receive free testing for the next 10 days.
So far 93,000 tests have been conducted in total, the biggest testing effort in Australia.