The mystery case was revealed on Saturday as a young City of Melbourne man who lives with three other family members. He developed symptoms on Friday morning, was tested straight away and returned a positive result in the afternoon.
“I’m always concerned when you see new cases coming up,” COVID-19 Response Commander Jeroen Weimar said.
Health authorities are urging a testing surge after testing rates dropped to 15,110 swabs on Friday, significantly below the daily target of 20,000 or more.
“My personal view is that there are certainly more cases out there, I think we’re talking very small numbers, but we really need to track them down,” Mr Weimar said.
Victoria Health Minister Martin Foley said the young man diagnosed on Friday had done everything correctly. His family members have been tested.
The man had made limited excursions outside, mostly for care reasons.
Whilst he was not a primary close contact of any known cases, the man has been linked to a number of existing exposure sites, Mr Weimar said.
He urged Victorians to keep getting tested and to not dismiss potential COVID-19 symptoms as “winter sniffles”.
He said he had been confident in testing numbers up until about three days ago, but that the high numbers needed to continue as new cases were still emerging.
“I am concerned the testing numbers are dropping, and while we are still dealing with new cases emerging,” he said.
“I would really encourage people to keep those testing numbers up. That will give us the best feel if we are getting a good cross-section of people coming forward.”
Health teams are also continuing to work with the Reservoir family cases, and with the Melbourne couple who have tested positive to COVID-19 in Queensland.
More than 20,000 people were vaccinated in Victorian state clinics yesterday, while 15,110 people were tested statewide.
Mr Foley said all elective surgery would begin again in Melbourne on Tuesday, but reminded residents that other restrictions remained in force.
Melbourne residents cannot have visitors at home except for their intimate partner or a single-person social bubble.
Outdoor gatherings are restricted to groups of 10 people maximum.
It follows a result of zero new cases in the state announced yesterday.
In the past 24 hours, Victoria issued 20,660 vaccine doses and received 15,110 test results.
Victoria’s new COVID-19 case is “likely” to be connected to the Whittlesea outbreak, Mr Weimar has said.
That would link the case to the Arcare Maidstone, Reservoir, and Queensland traveller COVID-19 cases.
There are still more than 2300 Victorians in isolation as close contacts of the Whittlesea outbreak.
More than 4000 close contacts have been allowed to leave quarantine.
“We’ve seen in the outbreak and number of people turn positive on day 13 so we have to make sure we finish those isolation periods with negative test and you are released by our public health team to continue working around the clock to ensure we support everybody in isolation and quarantine and detecting other cases we may have out there,” Mr Weimar said.
In Victoria’s West Melbourne outbreak of the Delta variant, 761 primary close contacts have been released from quarantine, while 764 are still in isolation.
“I’m pleased to confirm that North Melbourne Primary School will reopen on Tuesday,” Mr Weimar said.
“Now completely deep-cleaned, cleared – great to see so many kids coming out of isolation.”
Mr Weimar said the positive Victorian cases who travelled to Queensland “increasingly” appear to be an older set of cases who had come to the end of their infections period.
“There are a number of Tier Two sites we’ve identified that go back a number of weeks to May 18,” he said.
“There are a number of those Tier Two exposure sites that I’d ask people to check and it goes back to the conversation from earlier that we believe there are other branches that may be out there that we’ve not yet discovered.”
Mr Foley has played down suggestions Victoria’s vaccine supply is in trouble, saying the federal government was meeting the demands of the schedule.
“The prime minister was very clear that he didn’t want the states to stockpile and he wanted the states to get those jabs into people’s arms as quickly as possible and they would manage the supply to all the states for the second doses, and I’m confident as the evidence supports this,” he said.
Mr Foley said there was no doubt, if the current delivery rate was maintained, that people who had received their first Pfizer jab would receive the second within the recommended three to six weeks.
Mr Foley said he was not worried about decreasing confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine following a second death linked to the jab this week.
He said people over 50 appeared to be increasingly confident in the dose, and that Commonwealth data showed more and more were queueing up.
Another day of zero local cases in Queensland
There was good news for Queensland, which recorded another day of zero local COVID-19 cases, continuing a run of happy results after a traveller from Melbourne tested positive.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced this morning that the Sunshine State had only recorded one overseas-acquired case in the past 24 hours.
It is the second day in a row the state has had no locally-acquired cases.
The result came after a further five people were caught trying to dodge Queensland’s border restrictions yesterday.
Two were detected coming across the border at Goondiwindi, another came into Dalby via the Coolangatta border and two people were found in the Wide Bay.
They’ve been fined and put into hotel quarantine.
New South Wales has also notched up another “donut day” with no new cases.
A record number of 16,288 vaccines were administered and 19,304 people tested across the state.
