Latest Victoria coronavirus update has added 19 more deaths to its soaring toll this morning.
Australia has officially surpassed the sobering milestone of 300 COVID-19 deaths.
That’s after Victoria today passed its previous maximum death toll, to record 19 deaths in one day.
The victims age from 50 to 90-years-old and 14 of them are linked to the State’s aged care outbreak.
The total number of new cases today for Victoria was 322.
There are now 1,065 active cases in the healthcare sector alone, joining the total of 7,869 active cases State-wide.
Greater stability in numbers
Premier Daniel Andrews said while it was too early to make any concrete judgements, there were signs Victoria’s coronavirus caseloads were starting to “stabilise”
“It is still very early for us to be trying to measure the impacts of stage four, but we’re certainly seeing perhaps some greater stability that is a result of the cumulative impact of stage three,” he said.
“I think yesterday or the day before we shared with you what our experts tell us would have been the case, many tens of thousands of cases if we had not gone to stage three and masks and the other settings we put in place.
“So that has achieved a lot. It just hasn’t achieved as much as we needed to. It’s bought some stability in the numbers.”
At-home testing for the vulnerable
Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos revealed a new plan to ramp up testing without putting anyone at risk.
“We are starting a call-to-test program that will enable someone to call our coronavirus hotline, they’ll be assessed by a nurse through that hotline and, with a GP referral, we will go to them,” she said.
This is designed to ensure that approximately 200 vulnerable Victorians every day will have access to this new testing capacity, making sure that people who might have limited mobility due to disability or might have other vulnerabilities due to chronic health conditions can get tested in their own home.
NSW records 14 COVID cases
After its first day of a single digit case rise on the weekend, NSW is back up to double digits today.
Twelve of those cases were from known clusters, with one still under investigation as the source is not evident.
Worryingly, this could indicate the start of community transmission within NSW.
Western Australia records 5 days in a row with 0 cases
WA continues their streak of no new cases recording their now fifth day in a row with 0 new cases recorded overnight.
WA now only has 3 active cases remaining in the state.
Read more: 0 New Cases & 3 Active Case In WA
More Australia coronavirus news and updates on SoPerth.com.au.
Feature image: AAP Image/James Ross
