MILDURA is facing a new pandemic reality, according to Victoria’s COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar, as its lockdown was extended by an extra seven days on Friday.
A new case in Ouyen, cases emerging among farm workers in Robinvale and escalating household transmission in Mildura demonstrated the challenges health authorities were having in controlling the virus outbreak through north-west Victoria.
Another 34 cases were announced in the Mildura local government area on Friday – higher than in any other regional area – with Mr Weimar revealing to local media late in the day that still more had been identified.
“We’ve all got to recognise that we’ve got COVID active in our community, which certainly for most of the north-west just hasn’t been our reality for the vast majority of the last two years,” Mr Weimar said.
“The case in Ouyen today kind of highlights it. I mean, who’d have thought we would have a case in Ouyen, really, in a supermarket of all places?
“I wouldn’t have thought that when I drove through on Monday, so it is a bit of a mind-set shift.
“This has been very real in Melbourne with high case numbers and it’s also now real in most regional communities, where there are cases here and there.”
Mildura LGA’s total active case count was at last count 188.
Mr Weimar praised the community for turning out in high numbers for testing, with about 1000 tests per day over the past week.
Across Victoria, there were 2179 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases in Victoria on Friday and another six lives lost.
In NSW, there were 399 new cases and four deaths. Three of the new cases were in Dareton, which had 21 active cases.
Mildura and Melbourne are now the only two mainland Australian cities in lockdown, with stay-at-home orders for the Mildura Rural City Council area now expected to end at 11.59pm next Friday.
Mr Weimar said while other regions such as Geelong, Shepparton and Latrobe Valley had similar case numbers to Mildura, health authorities were confident those outbreaks were under greater control.
“What we are seeing in Mildura at the moment is a lot of household-to-household transmission and it keeps jumping around,” he said.
“So we don’t feel yet like we have got all those who are likely to have been exposed completely locked down at this point in time, which is why the lockdown becomes more important.
“Until we feel we know exactly where it is and we’ve got all those people stabilising and isolating it becomes a bit of a volatile thing to do.”
Member for Mildura Ali Cupper described the seven-day lockdown extension as a “major setback for our community”.
“It is a difficult pill to swallow,” Ms Cupper said.
“Ultimately, health experts have determined that our double-dose vaccination rate is still too low to consider safely emerging from lockdown with the number of daily COVID-19 cases we are seeing.
“We’ve been given an accelerated glimpse of the realities of living with COVID-19 once our state, and indeed the nation, opens up at 80 per cent double-dose.
“This, ultimately, is why vaccination is so important.”
Last Sunday, 54.6 per cent of the Mildura population aged 16 and over were fully vaccinated, which was the lowest rate of full vaccination in regional Victoria, but in positive news the rate has lifted to 58 per cent as more locals roll up their sleeves.
“The higher we get this the better, and I’d like to thank everyone who has already been vaccinated, and those who will be soon,” Ms Cupper said.
