TWO new coronavirus cases were identified in Mildura on Wednesday night, bringing total active cases in the city to four.
The cases were household contacts of the man who attended the MCG on July 10.
Both people had been isolating for their entire infectious period, according to Minister for Health Martin Foley.
Victoria announced 26 new cases on Thursday.
Twenty-four of these had been in isolation for their entire infectious period and all were linked to current outbreaks.
Of the two cases infectious in the community, one connected to Trinity Grammar had a petrol station in regional Victoria as their only exposure site.
The second case was connected to the AAMI Park cluster and visited Prahran Market and Market Lane Coffee last Saturday while infectious.
Authorities praised the person who visited the service station, while travelling back from East Gippsland to Melbourne to self-isolate, for being as careful as possible when they were notified they were a close contact.
“They immediately travelled back home from regional Victoria into isolation, as required, and they only made that one stop for petrol, had limited contact with staff and even disinfected the credit card that they were using before handing it over,” acting Chief Health Officer Ben Cowie told reporters.
Mr Foley praised Victorians for following the rules of the state’s fifth lockdown.
Within three days, Victoria had gone from only 6 per cent of new coronavirus cases isolating while infectious to 92 per cent, he said.
“We are doing what we can to limit the movement of people and, with the help of all Victorians during this lockdown, and the fact that we have had the Victorian population so supportive of those restrictions of movements, we remain confident that we can still get ahead of this.”
Thursday’s numbers were the state’s highest daily total of the current outbreak and follows the 22 cases reported on Wednesday.
Mildura recorded 520 COVID-19 tests on Wednesday, a significant drop from the 1099 tests taken on Tuesday and 1105 tests taken on Monday.
A spokesperson for Bendigo Health, which is running drive-through testing at Mildura Recreation Reserve, said the drop in numbers was “not really a concern”.
Mildura overall had “easily over 4000 tests or closer to 5000” tests once results from private clinics were counted, the spokesperson said, which was a “reasonably pleasing rate” for the population.
The tier 1 and tier 2 testing site at Old Aerodrome Ovals closed after demand for tests slowed on Tuesday.
Two new test sites, in Mildura and Irymple, opened on Wednesday.
