“We have all tested positive, it is very worrying, almost overwhelming,” he said.
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley and Acting Chief Health Officer Ben Cowie provided an update earlier today on the Victorian outbreak.
Mr Foley said of the 176 new cases today, 93 were under investigation, which brought the total number of active cases to 1,029.
Thirteen new cases were linked to the Shepparton outbreak as many in isolation came forward for their day 13 testing.
"We have 61 people with COVID 19 in our hospitals, 20 of those are in intensive care, of whom 13 are on a ventilator," Mr Foley said.
Authorities are not seeing an ongoing high rate of community transmission in regional Victoria, according to Mr Cowie.
"The Shepparton community continue to do the hard yards in terms of isolating, and the arrival of day 13 testing is great news for many of them," he said.
"There are thousands of tests to be done (in Shepparton), and if someone doesn't get their day 13 test done on day 13, it can be done on day 14, it doesn't trigger an extension to the isolation or quarantine."
The number of weeks between each dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be shortened in all Victorian state-run hubs, Mr Cowie announced.
Instead of waiting 12 weeks between doses, Victorians will wait just six weeks for their second shot of AstraZeneca.
This now matches the dosage interval of the Pfizer vaccine.
Yesterday, Premier Daniel Andrews flagged the possibility of easing restrictions in regional Victoria, excluding Shepparton. He did not indicated how that would impact communities in close proximity to the Shepparton and Merrigum outbreaks such as Kyabram.
Rolling coverage of the regional COVID-19 outbreak is available at our sister-site The Shepparton News.
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