Victoria Covid update: highest daily cases in 12 months as year 12s flood vaccine bookings
A priority vaccine booking line for year 12 students in Victoria was overwhelmed with 30,000 calls on Monday morning, as the state recorded its highest daily case numbers since August last year.
There were 246 cases reported on Monday, the highest number since 16 August, 2020, just two weeks after the hard lockdown for the second wave began, when the state recorded 266 cases.
It comes as Victoria announced one-off payments of $1,500 to provide rent relief to people who pay more than 30% of their income in rent, and have lost at least 20% of that income due to coronavirus restrictions.
Housing minister Richard Wynne said the government was also asking landlords to “show a level of compassion” to tenants. The same request was made last year, with mixed results.
There were 92 people in hospital in Victoria on Monday, 26 in intensive care and 14 on a ventilator. Just 10 of those in hospital had been partially vaccinated and one person who had been fully vaccinated was well enough to be discharged on Monday morning, health minister Martin Foley said.
Thirteen of the 92 were too young to be eligible for a vaccine at the time they were diagnosed, Foley said, and 67 were eligible but unvaccinated.
Year 12 students, year 11 students taking year 12 subjects, and teachers and staff conducting end of year examinations have been given priority access to Covid vaccine bookings with the aim of getting them double vaccinated by the first week of October, when assessments are due to begin.
Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning
Schools sent out a priority booking number over the weekend.
Foley said the line was “extremely busy” with “extremely enthusiastic” year 12 and 11 students, with 30,000 calling before 11am.
There are between 50,000 and 67,000 students who need priority access to vaccines.
Victoria’s Covid response commander, Jeroen Weimar, said doses had been set aside for every student doing year 12 exams.
“There’s no frantic rush,” he said. “The doses are set aside for you. Everyone who wants to get it done can get
it done.”
As of Monday, 60.9% of Victorians over the age of 16 have had at least one dose of a Covid vaccine. Restrictions are due to slightly ease in Melbourne when the state hits a first dose vaccination rate of 70%, which if current numbers continue will be next week.
Foley said the first doses of Pfizer from the UK, secured by the federal government under a 4m dose swap deal, were arriving in Australia today and should be rolled out through clinics by the end of the week.
He said restrictions in regional Victoria – with the exception of Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley – would be eased before then, although he would not announce when or what that easing might entail. However he said it would not be a “snapback” to the very low restrictions of April or May.
Half of the new cases reported on Monday were in Melbourne’s northern suburbs and a third were in the western suburbs.
Among the cases in the northern suburbs was a security guard who works at an immigration centre in Broadmeadows.
Weimar said the positive case is a guard who works outside the facility and “does not have contact with the internal staff”. He said the responsibility for testing detainees rests with the commonwealth.
Weimar said the virus was spreading through households and also small community owned businesses in those suburbs, as well as through essential workers.
“If essential workers aren’t top of their symptoms, are not out getting vaccinated and not testing regularly, that presents a significant risk in terms of onward transmission,” he said.
He dismissed suggestions contact tracing had fallen behind in Victoria, saying contact tracers are still in the “green” in hitting their state and national targets for contacting positive cases and close contacts within set timeframes. Instead, he said the issue is a “fatigued” populace who have become less vigilant about following public health measures.
“We’re absolutely seeing people saying: it’s just too hard, I can’t do this any more,” he said.
“We’re seeing small breaches here and there of all those rules that have held us back [from high numbers] for so long.”
Weimar said it was still “collectively within our ability” to slow transmission rates and control the outbreak, but that while small breaches continued to occur the virus will continue to spread.
“[It will] spread beyond the inner northern and western suburbs,” he said. “The consequence of that [will be] far larger numbers of people being positive, far larger numbers of people going to hospital, and far larger numbers of people ending up in intensive care and in a really bad place.”