Victoria's chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton, left, and Acting Victorian Premier James Merlino speak to reporters amid the state's latest Covid-19 outbreak. Photo / Getty Images
Victoria has announced four new cases of Covid-19 this morning, after two previous cases reclassified as false positives overnight fuelled hope for an early end to lockdown.
The four new community cases take the state's outbreak to 65 people.
There were also two cases recorded from overseas travellers who are currently in hotel quarantine.
The results were detected among 49,439 tests received on Thursday, and there were 24,169 vaccine doses administered at state-run sites.
The lockdown was originally set to end at 11.59pm on June 3, but the tough restrictions are now set to remain in place for another seven days.
University of Melbourne Epidemiologist, Professor Tony Blakely, told the ABC the false positives could see the lockdown lifted ahead of schedule.
"Things now look a little bit better and maybe we won't need another week lockdown, but it's impossible to predict that accurately," he said.
Blakely said so long as the state doesn't see a rise in daily infections, then Melbourne would be in a good position to reopen.
Victorian Opposition leader Michael O'Brien wasted no time in calling for an end to the "hugely damaging" lockdown after the false positive cases were announced.
"If the basis for the lockdown extension turned out to be false, it should end," he wrote on Twitter. "Time for the Labor Government to be upfront with Victorians."
However, Victoria's Acting Premier James Merlino said the false positive cases would not affect state's lockdown timetable.
"The proposition put forward by public health was that we needed this further seven-day period for Greater Melbourne to absolutely run this thing to the ground, and that remains the case," he said.
"We've got a high number of cases, many of them have some concern to public health. There are a number of other cases where we've seen fleeting contact and transmission."
Merlino said Victoria could not "risk [the virus] running away from us".
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