Victoria hit 80 new COVID-19 infections overnight, the largest spike recorded in the second wave to hit the city.
The figure includes 41 cases which were in the community while still infectious and 13 new mystery cases.
More than 56,000 people were tested for COVID and 33,000 people were vaccinated on Wednesday.
Only five per cent of the cases concern people aged over 60. Children and teenagers were found to make up more than a third of the cases, whereas 58 per cent of cases in Victoria related to people who were under the age of 30, showing that the age of the victims has become increasingly younger.
The Victorian government has promised to fully vaccinate the state’s year 12 students over the coming weeks, before they sit for their first VCE exam, but details as to how this will be done have yet to be given.
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The Australian Technical Advisory group granting all children from 12 to 15 years access to the Pfizer vaccine access to the Pfizer jab and the opening of bookings at commonwealth vaccination centres and GPs will not be delayed.
The opposition is calling for a detail plan to be unveiled.
The number of exposure sites is growing, and there are currently more than 800 exposure sites in Victoria with 100 of these in Shepparton where a third of the population is in isolation. Victoria’s Health Minister Martin Foley said the outbreak risk in Shepparton was still very real.
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“It’s our public health officials who tell us there’s a lot of work to do to make sure that as we take up vaccination rates up, we bring infection levels down,” he said. “We know that numbers bounce around.”
