State records no new COVID-19 cases, raising hopes for eased restrictions

With an extended run of no new locally acquired cases outside the Holiday Inn cluster, Premier Daniel Andrews said the state was “well-placed” to ease restrictions on Friday.

“I think we can be quite positive about making some announcements tomorrow,” Mr Andrews said.

“We’re at the beginning of the end, but it’s not over yet.”

Under current restrictions, Victorians are allowed a maximum of five visitors to their homes and public gatherings are limited to 20 people outdoors.

The cap on people returning to work – currently set at 50 per cent – may move to 75 per cent in the public and private sector if restrictions are eased.

On a positive note, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is reopening at the Princess Theatre after COVID-19 shut down the show for 11 months.

Audience numbers will be capped at 50 per cent on Thursday and Friday due to restrictions from the snap lockdown. If restrictions ease as expected on Friday, the cap will lift to 85 per cent from Saturday.

The training and credentials of all Victorian doctors and nurses involved in Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout are being urgently reviewed after two aged care residents in Queensland accidentally received overdoses of the vaccine.

Vaccinations in aged care homes are behind schedule just days into the federal government’s rollout as an untrained doctor was revealed to have delivered the wrong dose to patients in Brisbane’s north.

NSW appears to be leading the charge in vaccinating front-line workers. More than 3200 quarantine hotel staff and healthcare workers have received the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine in NSW.

A total of 808 vaccine doses were administered in Victoria on Wednesday, up from 675 on Tuesday and 580 on Monday. In total, 2063 vaccine doses have been received in Victoria this week.

Mr Andrews said the rollout was a “massive, massive logistics task” but was ultimately progressing well.

“It’s that sort of slow, steady, gradual work that has to be done so that we get the best outcomes for each of those [vaccine] cohorts and as the program expands,” he said.

Meanwhile, Victoria has tightened restrictions on travellers from Auckland after more cases emerged in the New Zealand city this week.

The Department of Health issued a statement late on Wednesday night saying all flights arriving from Auckland into Victoria would be regarded as “red zone” arrivals from 11.59pm on Wednesday.

The updated advice comes after three more cases emerged in Auckland on Tuesday, believed to be linked to an outbreak on February 14 that plunged the city into a snap three-day lockdown.

The statement said anyone arriving into the state from the New Zealand city would have to enter mandatory hotel quarantine for 14 days.

Any traveller from Auckland who arrived in Melbourne from Tuesday has been urged to get a COVID-19 test immediately and quarantine until they received a negative result.

Mr Andrews said that one flight had arrived from New Zealand since the new advice came into effect.

He said the flight was from a green zone, but that out of an “abundance of caution” everyone on the plane was being contacted by health authorities and told to get tested and isolate.

“One flight has come to Melbourne, one green-zone flight,” Mr Andrews said. “Our public health authorities are … in the process of contacting each of the people that [were] on that flight, explaining to them that they need to isolate and get tested.”