Victoria has reported a death due to COVID-19 and 12 new infections, ending a three-day stretch without a fatality.
Health authorities on Sunday released the latest statistics which takes Victoria’s death count from the virus to 810 and the national toll to 898.
In the fortnight up to Oct. 10 metropolitan Melbourne recorded a rolling average of 9.3 new cases per day, with the figure at 0.4 for regional areas.
Public health authorities decided weeks ago that the two-week rolling daily case average needed to drop to five, with less than five mystery cases, for lockdowns in the city to ease in line with regional Victoria.
Cases with an unknown source for 14 days as of Oct. 8 were 10.
Despite the ongoing cases, Melburnians are being urged not to lose hope, with the state’s chief health officer confident that eradicating community transmission is within reach.
Several COVID-19 outbreaks have ended a downward trend in infections, meaning the next step out of restrictions will not go ahead on Oct. 19 as hoped.
Premier Daniel Andrews on Saturday called on Melbourne residents to remain hopeful and stay the course on restrictions, saying some rules may ease on that date, even if less significantly than hoped.
“We always want these numbers lower, faster,” he said.
“We will beat this second wave, but we’ve got to do it properly.”
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton was upbeat on Saturday about the possibility of eradicating community transmission from the state.
“It’s all of the immediate responses to clusters, and if you can get on top of each of those and wrap the public health response around each and every one of those, then you end those chains of transmission and they’re gone forever,” he said.
Sutton said a cluster linked to Box Hill Hospital had grown to 10 with five new cases from one family.
A Kilmore cafe cluster has grown to six on Saturday but the Chadstone Shopping Centre outbreak, to which it is linked, recorded no new cases.
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