Victoria COVID-19 variant 'more infectious'

 

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 Victoria Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton says the new variant of COVID-19 in the state is “more infectious” than any variant seen last year. 

Mr Sutton said the variant of concern is “starting to show up in places where normally it would be less likely” such as the “well-ventilated” Brighton Beach Hotel. 

“We still had it as an exposure site, we still informed people to test and isolate until returning a negative, but in fact, all of those people will need to be in quarantine because transmission has occurred there,” he said. 

He said at least one in ten current cases have been transmitted in a casual contact setting while many previous cases were transmitted in the workplace and home close contact settings. “That's not something that we routinely see and we didn't routinely see it in 2020," he said.

 “We have to take a path where we drive this virus back down completely so that we can get control into the longer term.”