Key points:
- Regional Victoria’s restrictions will ease from 11:59pm on Thursday if the regions stay coronavirus-free
- Mr Merlino says the lockdown needs extending because otherwise people will die
- More than 51,000 test results were received on Tuesday, and 20,585 vaccine doses were administered
Melbourne’s coronavirus lockdown will be extended for another seven days, Acting Premier James Merlino has confirmed.
The state’s seven-day circuit breaker lockdown was due to end at 11:59pm Thursday, but will now run for at least another week.
The lockdown will continue across Greater Melbourne, with some changes to schools and movement.
Restrictions will being easing in regional Victoria from 11:59pm on Thursday, if testing shows there continues to be no new cases.
The “ring of steel” in place during 2020’s extended lockdowns will not be used to enforce the different restriction levels.
Six new locally acquired COVID-19 cases were recorded on Tuesday, taking the state’s outbreak to 60.
The positive cases were detected from 51,033 test results received on Tuesday, while 20,585 vaccination doses were administered at state-run vaccination sites.
The government has highlighted concerns that the Indian Kappa variant involved in the outbreak was more infectious than previous strains.
Mr Merlino said the variant currently in the community was “quicker and more contagious than we have ever seen before”.
He said vaccinations were the best way to protect against contracting the virus, but only 2 per cent of the population are fully vaccinated.
“If we let this thing run its course, it will explode. We’ve got to run this to ground because if we don’t, people will die,” Mr Merlino said.
“And if that happens, it’s our most vulnerable. It’s our parents, it’s our grandparents, it’s Victorians with underlying conditions or compromised immunity.
“It’s those Victorians who will pay the price. In the end this is about saving lives.”
After months of concern about QR code compliance, the Service Victoria QR code check-ins will now be mandatory across the whole state for places like supermarkets and shops.
In Melbourne, the five reasons to leave home will remain the same — shopping for food and essential supplies, authorised work or study, care and care-giving, exercise and getting vaccinated.
But from 11:59pm on Thursday, a 5-kilometre radius around the home will be lifted to 10 kilometres.
Students in years 11 and 12 will be able to return to face-to-face learning.
The list of authorised workplaces will also expand to include outdoor jobs like landscaping and painting.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, whose advice the restrictions is based on, said “at least one in 10 current cases” had caught the virus in “casual contact settings”, over the home or workplaces settings where transmission was more expected.
The number of exposure sites across Melbourne is now well over 350, with thousands of contacts currently isolating or quarantining.
Professor Sutton said in “large part” the rationale for the lockdown was ensuring that new cases emerging were not moving about and therefore not creating more exposure sites and chains of transmission.
He said the more infectious variant meant some sites which would be Tier 2 now had to be considered as Tier 1, meaning people had to quarantine for 14 days.
“I’m not giving it magical qualities, I don’t need to overplay the danger here,” Professor Sutton said.