Victoria has reported three more COVID-19 deaths and eight more cases.
The figures on Oct 3 take the state toll to 805 and the national death count to 893.
It means Melbourne’s latest 14-day rolling average stands at 12 cases and there have been 11 cases with an unknown source in the fortnight up to Wednesday.
Despite Saturday’s single-figure results, a recent outbreak of COVID-19 linked to Australia’s biggest shopping centre shows why it’s unsafe to ease restrictions, Premier Daniel Andrews has said.
A cluster of cases at The Butcher Club inside southeast Melbourne’s Chadstone Shopping Centre has grown to 11 and includes a family.
The premier challenged Victorians to consider the potential impact of a cluster in such a large, busy setting.
“If we were to open up now, just as our modelling tells us … it will be many hundreds of cases,” he said on Friday.
The average new daily case count needs to drop below five and there must be fewer than five mystery cases per fortnight before authorities further ease Melbourne’s lockdown restrictions.
The premier expects this to happen by October 19.
There are 107 people currently in hotel quarantine, of whom 55 are frontline workers.
Flights into Melbourne are not expected to resume until after the hotel quarantine inquiry delivers its findings, due by November 6.
Andi Yu in Melbourne
