Victoria COVID LIVE updates: State records nine new local cases, more exposure sites added; Delta variant could extend Melbourne lockdown

There are currently 94 active cases in Victoria, and the overwhelming majority of these cases are locally acquired infections.

This graph shows how active case numbers have grown since late May, and they show no signs of levelling off just yet:

You’ll notice that for the entire chart, there have always been about 20 active cases. These were overwhelmingly returned travellers in hotel quarantine.

Exactly two weeks ago there were no locally acquired COVID-19 cases in Victoria, but that changed when four local cases were announced later that day and since then local case numbers have continued to rise.

You can also see how active case numbers have tracked since the start of the pandemic using this graph:

By default it shows a linear scale, meaning the 94 active cases right now are dwarfed by the 6767 active cases at the height of the state’s second wave last year.

But once you switch to a ‘log’ view – which better displays exponential growth or decline – you can see how active case numbers have fluctuated since the start of the pandemic.

Each day, like most news organisations around the world, The Age takes a close look at a particular issue and offers our view. Today’s editorial is (surprise, surprise!) COVID-related. Specifically, vaccines. You can let us know what you think with a letter to the editor. Email [email protected] and please include your home address and telephone number.

The United States will soon ship 25 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to a range of countries in desperate need. President Joe Biden has committed to exporting a total of 80 million doses by the end of the month with more to come, after growing pressure on nations such as the US that have ample supply and have already vaccinated a large proportion of their populations.

While this is a welcome change, when you put it into the context of the global need for more vaccine doses, America’s newfound generosity is a drop in the ocean. About 11 billion doses are needed to vaccinate 70 per cent of the world’s population, which most experts consider an absolute minimum requirement to reach herd immunity.

With about 2 billion doses having been administered worldwide so far, mostly in developed nations with large local manufacturing capacity, the road ahead in containing the pandemic is a long one.

The push to step up manufacturing capacity is having mixed success. China is getting up to speed. It is now vaccinating about 20 million of its own people a day, and it is sending tens of millions of doses overseas. Its two vaccine manufacturers, Sinovac and Sinopharm, have said they can, combined, make up to 5 billion doses a year.

But there are also frustrations. The push for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, led by India and South Africa and recently backed by the Biden administration and China, is being blocked by the European Union.

The EU has put forward an alternative plan, which has big-pharma support, that would lift export restrictions on vaccines and their raw materials, expand global manufacturing capacity, and make it easier for countries to use existing rules to override patents. At the very least, the counterproposal is going to slow any decision on the issue.

If you’re lucky enough to have school children in regional Victoria, you’ll have waved them off to their classrooms by now. So, too, the parents of year 11 and 12 students across the state.

But most schoolchildren are still “remote learning” – and I use that term loosely – in metropolitan Melbourne. It’s great fun.

But in the midst of your work/schooling chaos, spare a thought for the Falconer family. Reporter Carolyn Webb caught up with the family of eight in Melbourne’s south-east.

Tess Falconer is happy that her six children, aged between nine and 16, are safe at home during Melbourne’s fourth lockdown but admits remote schooling means her home is usually in a state of chaos.

“There are some days, especially with remote learning, that you feel like sitting in the corner and crying,” she says.

Mrs Falconer advocates keeping busy and focusing on one day at a time, while her husband, Darren, says sometimes it’s good for the children to let off steam.

The children’s view of this enforced two weeks at home varies wildly from “it’s like being in jail” to “I like the food at home”.

Mrs Falconer, 36, from Hoppers Crossing in Melbourne’s south-west, feels this lockdown is going more smoothly than the previous three for her family – which includes Eric, 16; Nicholas, 14; Jorjia, 13; Liam, 11; Patrick, 10; and Christopher, nine.

Their teachers have smoothed out any technical glitches in conducting remote classes; the children, too, have got the hang of programs such as Microsoft Teams and ClassDojo.

Mr Falconer, 37, who works as a drafter for a steel fabrication company, says he has struggled. “As a family with kids, I’m constantly freaking out that my boss is going to say, ‘I’m sorry, the company’s going to stop now’ … the whole year has been horrible.”

Mrs Falconer is on a break from part-time work in admin but is busy with housework and helping with remote learning.

While 16-year-old Eric logs on to classes in his room, the younger five use a desk in the lounge room. Mrs Falconer says most of the time it’s “utter chaos”, but it’s “organised chaos” and she makes sure the children are ready to log on before 9am.

Disability advocates are pleading for specialist schools in Melbourne to be reopened, saying remote learning is “having devastating consequences” for many students and their carers.

Melanie Kent, who has two daughters with intellectual disabilities, fears multiple bouts of enforced remote learning are making it much tougher for them to develop the skills they require for employment after school.

“I keep on telling the school, my aim is that once [daughter Bianca] gets to VCE level I want her to have a few options like TAFE or VCAL and I want her at a level where those options are open to her,” Ms Kent said. “But every time we have a lockdown and she stops learning, she falls further behind.”

Students in specialist schools were put at the front of the queue alongside VCE students when children made a staged return to face-to-face learning last year.

But they have not been given the same priority status in this lockdown, remaining in remote learning while year 11 and 12 students in Melbourne returned to face-to-face learning on Friday, as did all regional students.

Bianca’s school, Naranga Special School, is closed this week for all but vulnerable students and those who cannot be supervised at home. It is running classes online. So too is Frankston Special Developmental School, where Bianca’s older sister Isabella, who has Down syndrome and a more severe intellectual disability, is a student.

Ms Kent says her daughters are doing so little real study while remote learning that “it’s pretty much a joke”.

“They [the schools] have got to do something because they are required to but it’s the bare minimum,” she said.

The girls also struggle to connect with their lessons via a computer screen.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says domestic and international vaccine passports will be crucial in helping Australia emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison flagged the possibility of domestic vaccine passports last month to help those who are vaccinated bypass state lockdowns. However, the idea received a frosty reception from the NSW and Queensland premiers.

But Mr Turnbull said vaccine hesitancy is a major issue and Australians should have a vested interest in ensuring everyone is vaccinated.

“I know people will say this is tough this is non-libertarian,” he said on RN Breakfast. “[But] we need to be able to have good records so people can authoritatively and accurately say whether or not they have been vaccinated.

“Australians have to be tough about this and make it very clear that there are some things you will not be able to do if you are not vaccinated. Similar to no jab no play.”

Mr Turnbull said he understood that you can’t force people to be vaccinated.

“But if you want to work in healthcare, if you want to work in aged care [and] if you want to get on an airplane, if you want to go to a cinema, we are entitled to say you can’t do it to protect the rest of the community,” he said.

Mr Turnbull added that Australia needed to develop more resilient health and economic systems to pandemic-proof the nation.

“A virus can spread at the speed of a jet airplane. So we cannot treat this as just a one in 100 year event. We’ve got to make sure we we don’t waste this crisis.”

The testing numbers were lower yesterday but that’s still 24,265 Victorians who lined up to take a coronavirus test on a wintry Sunday. If you have any symptoms and are looking for a testing centre, you can check out the wait times right here. The highest wait time right now is 45 minutes at Heidelberg’s Repat, followed by 30-minute waits at The Alfred and the Royal Children’s hospitals.

Victoria has recorded nine new locally acquired cases of COVID-19.

Two cases reported yesterday at Arcare Maidstone, an aged care home in Melbourne’s north-west, take today’s official numbers to 11.

There are now 94 active cases across the state.

COVID-19 gave Australia the national cabinet: an unprecedented coming together of our political leaders that is expected to continue in a post COVID-world. But around that, there has been plenty of bickering between the federal government and the states – and among the states themselves.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has just told a Sydney radio station that the states should be receiving vaccinations based on their population. This is in response to the federal government’s decision to provide Victoria with an additional 100,000 Pfizer doses.

Ms Berejiklian said the COVID-19 outbreak in Victoria appeared to be under control and it was only fair NSW received its “fair share”.

“Anything we can do to help, we should,” she told 2GB on Monday morning. “[But] I think fair is fair and we should just receive based on the size of every state.

“We are taking in lots of bodies every week through the airport and we do it because it’s the right thing to do .

“We have a lot on our shoulders as well. I think it’s only fair that we get our fair share of the vaccine.

“The unfolding situation in Victoria appears to be under control. It seems to be manageable.

“NSW has had similar, if not larger, outbreaks and we’ve dealt with things as we’ve seen fit.

“I just think moving forward, we just have to offer states an incentive for doing the right thing, offer states an incentive for getting on top of things and I hope that’s the way things happen in the future.”