What concerns an epidemiologist about COVID-19 cases in Victoria this week

An epidemiologist says he is “surprised” and “concerned” Victoria’s daily COVID-19 cases haven’t fallen faster over the past week.

Professorial fellow of Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne, Professor Tony Blakely, says cases fell sharply two weeks ago, but that decline has now slowed, and that’s cause for concern.

“In the last week they’ve come down not so fast,” he told Ross and Russel.

“I was surprised by that because I thought they’d really truck on down in the last week, because it was 10 days or so after the lockdown was put in place.

“We’re going down, but it’s not as fast as I would like, which concerns me a little bit.”

Professor Blakely says new daily cases should fall to 50 or fewer per day before we open up, but it’s looking increasingly unlikely that goal will be reached before the end of the current lockdown, which is due to end on September 13.

“If these numbers don’t start going down more rapidly in percentage terms each day, the chance of us getting less than say 50 cases per day on average by the end of the six week lockdown is looking tough,” he said.

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