Michaela Meade
Victoria was holding its breath on Monday as the state waited for news of lockdown restrictions easing on Tuesday.
The state recorded 11 new COVID-19 cases on Monday.
The health department said all new locally acquired cases were linked to current known outbreaks, and all were in quarantine throughout the entirety of their infectious period.
The state has been in its fifth lockdown since Thursday, July 15.
Premier Daniel Andrews said on Sunday that a downward trend in cases was a positive sign, but that he couldn’t announce what would happen with restrictions yet.
“That trend that we hoped would stabilise… has in fact done that,” Mr Andrews said.
“The strategy is working, but it’s still too early for me to be able to tell Victorians what will happen at midnight on Tuesday night.”
The health department did not identify any new exposure sites overnight to Monday.
Several sites in the northern suburbs were identified as exposure sites over the past two weeks, including in Broadmeadows, Epping, Campbellfield, Craigieburn, Dallas, and Roxburgh Park.
As of Sunday, there were 17 cases in the City of Hume.
Last week, Health Minister Martin Foley confirmed the Hume family who travelled to Victoria from Sydney, and were the initial COVID-19 cases in the area in the most recent outbreak, will not be fined.
The family had travelled to the state under a red zone permit and were required to quarantine for 14 days.
A member of the family breached isolation and attended both Coles at Craigieburn Central Shopping Centre and Metro Petroleum at Broadmeadows.
Mr Foley said the family had been “forthcoming” with contact tracers.
“They readily shared [information],” he said.
“Because there was a clear, clear set of engagements around the forthcoming nature of those discussions, the ready provision of the information, I want to thank those linked households for their engagement.
“That family clearly breached the rule in terms of how it applied but did so in a particular set of circumstances, in a particular set of arrangements, with no ill intent.
“The sad truth is that as a result of very close family contacts within that community, it is now spread across a number of households.”
Meanwhile, global construction company Multiplex has been selected to build the COVID-19 quarantine hub in Mickleham.
The hub was proposed for a site on Donnybrook Road by the state government in April and approved by the federal government last month. It will contain 1000 beds, with the first 500 to be in use by the end of the year.
Work is expected to begin onsite from early August.
