Overnight there were 11 locally acquired cases of COVID-19 were reported in Victoria, bringing the total number of active cases to 103.
Over the same 24-hour period to midnight on Sunday, 09 August, Victoria’s Department of Health reported that of 39,987 test results were received and 17,101 people were vaccinated bringing the total to 1,795, 297 people who have been vaccinated in the state so far.
The department said the 11 new cases were all linked and that one case had been in quarantine during his or her infectious period.
The state’s Health department announced that anyone in Victoria who had been in Cairns and Yarrabah in Queensland after 12.01am, 29 July, or who had arrived in Victoria before 11.59 pm on 8 August were classified as Orange-zone arrivals which meant they had to get tested within 72 hours of arrival and were to stay in isolation until they received a negative result.
The Health Department warned that under the current conditions it was an offence to arrive in Victoria without a valid permit. exemption or exception with fines of up to $5,452 for any breaches.
It advised checking its Victorian Travel Permit System website for more information including “exceptions, exemptions, specified worker permits” .
READ MORE: AstraZeneca roll-out for Victorians aged 18 to 39 while state dives into lockdown 6.0
In Queensland, where an eight-day lockdown in the state’s south east ended today, there were nine cases reported by midnight yesterday bringing the total number of cases to 1,918 . There were currently148 active cases. To date there have been seven deaths attributed to COVID. Queensland’s government said a total of 3,656,013 tests had been carried out to date and 1,005,452 vaccine doses were administered.
Queensland’s Health Officer, Dr Jeanette Young, said in a statement on Sunday that while she was aware that the latest lockdowns had “hurt many people financially, I am truly sympathetic to those people and those businesses and I wish there were other ways to protect people during an outbreak”.
“However, there is no safe and effective way to protect the Queensland population, at least until we reach herd immunity with vaccinations. In all likelihood, we will endure more lockdowns before that happens,” said Dr Young.
“If the original COVID-19 was a formidable foe, then the Delta variant is a stronger, super strain that requires every ounce of effort to fight.
“As we’ve seen, it has attacked our children and our youths, affecting them far more than other variants. … While young people are less likely to fall severely ill if they are infected, they are now believed to be able to transmit the virus to other people.
This wasn’t the case with earlier strains. That’s what we are concerned about.
She said that 65 of the cluster’s cases in the state affected youths of 19 years old or younger and that five schools had bee affected.
“So far, more than 15,000 people are contacts, and more than 10,000 were quarantined,” said Dr Young.
At the time of writing figures for New South Wales were still to be updated. By 8pm on Saturday, 7 August, the state had reported 268 cases of which 88 were from a known source and 174 cases from unknown sources. There were 1,729 cases in total over the whole week of which 799 cases were from an unknown source.
