Health workers at the Kings Park Apartment Complex in central Melbourne yesterday. Photo / Ian Currie, NCA NewsWire
Health workers at the Kings Park Apartment Complex in central Melbourne yesterday. Photo / Ian Currie, NCA NewsWire
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley has announced two new cases of Covid-19 in his state in the last 24 hours, both of which are linked to a Melbourne townhouse complex.
All residents inside the Kings Park Apartment Complex at Southbank are in isolation. The two cases – both men with links to communal areas – will be included in tomorrow's figures.
Foley told reporters about 200 people from the complex have been tested thus far, and both new cases are linked to two cases at the complex reported yesterday.
Victoria's Covid-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said the apartment complex is now the number one priority, with infection control and testing teams on site. Wider areas of the complex will be locked down while the outbreak is addressed.
Weimar said the first cases of Covid-19 at the complex were offered a room in hotel quarantine, and they took up that offer. Today's cases will also be offered a spot in hotel quarantine.
Quizzed over whether people should be allowed to isolate at home if they live in the apartments – which one positive case, a baby, is doing with its mother – Weimar said there was no reason to suggest they shouldn't.
"We don't have any evidence of apartment-to-apartment transition like in hotel quarantine," he said. "I don't think we see the direct parallels."
Victorian Government nurses descended on the complex yesterday after concerns were raised over potential transmission between the buildings.
A case that tested positive on Saturday lived in the same complex as an aged care worker at Arcare Maidstone who also tested positive, Foley told reporters yesterday.
"There was reason to believe, both from genomic sequencing and from the epidemiology of these cases, possible exposure sites around a smaller number of internal facilities," he said.
"Health contacted residents of this complex to inform them of that potential transmission risk and have asked them to isolate.
"Department of Health specialist nurses were on site [on Monday] morning working with the residents and a pop-up testing facility was established near the facility to make sure that we could make it as easy as possible for people to get tested.
"Rather than wait for the community to come to the contact tracers and the testing facility, local public health took the view that they should go to them, and I think that is a good thing."
The Southbank complex is now a tier 1 exposure site - meaning anyone who was at the complex between June 2 and June 14 must get tested immediately and quarantine for 14 days from the last time they were there.
Foley said there were just over 100 townhouses in the complex.
"An SMS went out to everyone on the list last night … and door knocking and testing is well under way," he said.
"It's quite a large area with multiple entry points and carparks.
"But we took the view if we want to run down these last few chains of transmissions, and we've got the ability to take the services and the engagement to that community, we should, because that will get the job done quicker."
Foley could not say what the shared facilities with the transmission risk were yesterday morning, only that they were not laundries.
