The Victorian health department is facing 58 charges and almost $100 million in fines over its failed hotel quarantine system set up to fight Covid.
Victoria’s Health Department has been hit with 58 charges over alleged safety failings in the state’s hotel quarantine program, as the state again recorded more Covid cases than NSW.
The Health Department faces a total fine of $95.1m if found guilty of all charges.
WorkSafe Victoria issued the charges following a 15-month investigation into hotel quarantine bungles that led to Melbourne’s second wave.
The regulator alleges the department failed to provide a safe working environment for employees and put others not employed by the department at risk.
The news came as Victoria marked a grim new record, recording 950 new cases and seven deaths. The results came from 61,322 tests.
But as case numbers continue to climb in Victoria, the NSW outbreak appears to be on the decline.
NSW reported 863 new cases on Wednesday, but in the state’s deadliest day yet, 15 deaths were reported.
Deakin University epidemiologist Catherine Bennett is hopeful the speed at which case numbers are increasing in Victoria will continue to slow.
Victorian infections have surpassed NSW case numbers for three days running.
Despite Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews imposing some of the harshest lockdown measures in the country, the state is on track to hit a rolling seven-day average of 1960 cases a day by October 25, according to Burnet Institute modelling. It shows infections then beginning to decline.
Professor Bennett said the “rapid growth” in the early stages of the outbreak suggested “restrictions in place in Victoria weren’t working as well (as in NSW)”.
But she said the concentration of cases in western and southwestern Sydney benefited NSW, compared to Victoria where cases are more spread out.
“It’s harder to have good compliance at a whole city or state level,” she said.
Burnet Institute modelling, prepared for the NSW government, predicted cases in local government areas of concern would peak at a seven-day average of about 1500 new infections a day in mid-September.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been hesitant to declare that NSW has reached the peak of infections, but analysts have projected cases will continue to fall.
University of Melbourne Research fellow Chris Billington has estimated that NSW’s “R-effective” – the rate at which Covid spreads – is now at 0.85. The same researcher has estimated Victoria’s R-effective at 1.31, meaning cases will continue to increase.
The percentage of positive swabs in Victoria is significantly higher than in NSW. The 950 cases reported by Victoria on Wednesday came from 61,300 tests – with 1.55 per cent of tests positive.
Significantly more tests are being done each day in NSW. On Wednesday, just 0.72 per cent of tests came back positive.
Professor Bennett said that the speed at which case numbers were increasing was slowing down, but the growth appeared more dramatic due to high infection numbers. DTelegraph