Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews. Photo / Getty Images
Victoria has announced 450 new coronavirus cases and 11 deaths today, including a woman in her 50s.
It comes after police arrested two men accused of organising a "freedom day" anti-lockdown rally in Melbourne's CBD this Sunday, in violation of the chief health officer's orders.
Victoria is now under harsh stage four lockdown measures that Treasury predicts will wipe a further A$9 billion from Australia's GDP and put another 400,000 people out of work.
Of today's new cases, 66 are "mystery cases", which is lower than previous days but "still far too many", Premier Daniel Andrews noted.
"We're going to work on watching mystery cases decrease over time, especially," chief health officer Brett Sutton said.
"It really is critically important to get across and on top of that community transmission so that we don't see all of the effects of it coming into workplaces, coming into other settings where outbreaks occur."
Professor Sutton said community transmission as a proportion of total cases every day had "come down from earlier in July, so that's a positive for sure".
Premier Daniel Andrews says there were 1150 doorknocks conducted yesterday of people who should be isolating.
Of those, 150 could not be found. "They have been referred to Victoria Police," he said.
Andrews said cumulatively Victoria Police and Australian Defence Force personnel had conducted more than 5000 doorknocks since July 22, with a total of 500 people "who were not where they should be".
"They've all been sent to Victoria Police and Victoria Police are making inquiries as they do, with those 500 people," he said.
That's a slightly different figure than the Premier gave on Tuesday, when he said there were 800 people found not at home out of 3000 doorknocked on Monday.
ABC journalist Casey Briggs earlier posted about some potential confusion around these numbers.
Six people have now died in a suspected mass methanol poisoning event.