Covid 19 coronavirus: the ‘unfortunate’ reason why Victoria will not escape from confinement

A leading disease expert has pulled Victoria’s roadmap out of the lockdown, saying the guidelines cannot be achieved, for one reason in particular.

Epidemiologist Dr. Peter Collignon has criticized the Victorian government’s roadmap to end the severe state lockdown as “unattainable,” especially within the tight deadlines.

On Sunday, Victoria’s Prime Minister Daniel Andrews announced that the lockdown would gradually end, with many things not being able to open until there were an average of five or fewer new cases per day for two weeks, including fewer than five cases with a unknown source during those two weeks. .

The roadmap describes that life cannot return to normal until there have been no new cases for two weeks.

Collignon told NCA NewsWire that an elimination strategy was a bad plan and that Victoria’s contact tracing system would make it nearly impossible to achieve.

“Some of their criteria (to end the lockdown) are less than five cases in two weeks, without a known source,” he said.

“But if you look at the Victorian numbers, they still have a large number of undefined cases.”

The epidemiologist said that in order to take the hard line on virus transmission numbers, contact tracing across the state must be much better and test results must be available within 24 to 48 hours.

“They don’t have that yet,” he said. “(Victoria’s) contact tracing … compared to NSW, her contact tracing has been pitiful.”