Despite harsher lockdown restrictions and Melburnians enduring their 204th day of lockdown, Victoria’s Delta outbreak continues to grow, with another 71 new local cases recorded over the past 24 hours:
Reported yesterday: 71 new local cases and no new cases acquired overseas.
– 22,191 vaccine doses were administered
– 46,446 test results were received
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl1hf3W#COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData [1/2] pic.twitter.com/pzEdkjiySP— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) August 22, 2021
Of these 71 local cases, 49 are linked to known outbreaks and 22 are under investigation.
It was the highest daily case count this outbreak and follows 61 cases on Saturday and 65 on Sunday:
Worsening outbreak.
Victoria has now recorded around 500 active local COVID cases, which are growing fast:
Outbreak growing quickly.
Meanwhile, University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor James McCaw believes it will be very difficult for Victoria to completely eliminate the Delta variant of COVID-19 and that ‘flattening the curve’ must be the priority.
Melbourne University epidemiologist Tony Blakely – who provided modelling to the Andrews government during Victoria’s lengthy lockdown last year – has also written in The AFR that Victoria’s state’s sixth lockdown was not going well and that it may need to loosen some restrictions on 2 September “even if it caused an increase of up to 500 cases a day”:
“Victoria has been in lockdowns for more than 200 days now. The citizens are pretty sick of it, with growing concerns about the mental health impacts of lockdowns, and the economic carnage”…
The notion of eliminating the Delta variant is a pipe dream. The priority must be to vaccinate most of the population and then open up.
