Active virus cases continue to fall

COVID-19 testing at Keilor Community Hub. Photo by Damjan Janevski. 210340_01

Tate Papworth

Active cases of COVID-19 within Brimbank have continued to plummet.

As of Sunday night, there were 354 active cases within the municipality, a stark drop from the 831 active cases one week earlier.

While the numbers are trending in the right direction, a number of outbreaks within Brimbank still remain a concern.

The outbreak at Estia Aged Care Facility in Ardeer now has 158 cases linked to it, while 115 cases have been linked to Cumberland Manor Aged Care Facility in Sunshine North.

In Brooklyn, 158 cases have been linked to the JBS abattoir.

But despite the outbreaks, Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said things were moving in the right direction.

“We’re not going to see, you know, 300s and 400s again in Victoria, not under my watch at least,” Professor Sutton said.

“It would be great to see numbers going down even further, but I still do expect that we’re on a trajectory, seven-day moving average that sees it continue to decrease.”

Professor Sutton said Victoria is on track to hit fewer than 150 new daily coronavirus cases this week.

”The overall trend is positive,” Professor Sutton said. “Next week we, if we carry on like this, we’ll see numbers below 150.”

But Premier Daniel Andrews said it was too soon to think about easing restrictions.

“If we start opening before we have defeated this second wave … we’ll just be in the beginnings of a third wave,” he said.

“So we’ve just got to stay the course on this – the ultra marathon. That’s the best analogy I can think of. We’re about halfway.

“It will be challenging those next two or three weeks. Just because when you start to get down to those smaller numbers … it only takes a few bad choices or some, you know, some bad, bad luck … when you’re talking about numbers that small.”