Why an epidemiologist is ‘hopeful’ that Victoria won’t enter a snap lockdown

Tensions are high in Victoria as the number of COVID-19 cases linked to the Holiday Inn grows.

But a leading epidemiologist says she’s hopeful that a snap lockdown won’t be called.

“That’s when you’re in the first stage. You don’t know exactly how far it has gone and you’ve got a lot of community exposure. Here, we’re already a few days into this investigation,” chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, Professor Catherine Bennett, told Neil Mitchell.

“While we do have public exposure sites because there was that unfortunate delay in one of the workers getting tested, who was out and about … it looks manageable.”

Professor Bennett says reducing the number of people who may gather would be a more sensible approach.

“There might be call to look at reducing the number of people in households and so on, but I’m hoping they wouldn’t go to a full lockdown.

“I do think our really rapid response, follow up, and the engagement of the public in getting tested … should hopefully help manage (the outbreak).”

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