26 new cases for Victoria as alerts issued for Prahran Market

The percentage of daily Victorian COVID-19 cases who were completely in isolation while infectious continues to rise, but so too does the number of new infections.

Victoria's Minister for Health Martin Foley has reported today that there were 26 new cases detected yesterday, of whom only two were in the community whilst infectious.

"One of the exposures was limited to a single transaction at a petrol station in regional Victoria, as they made their way back to Metropolitan Melbourne to isolate, and that person did an outstanding job in following all the required measures to minimise transmission," Foley says.

The other case relates to the AAMI Park cohort and was in the community for one day in the infectious period, visiting the Prahran Market and its Market Lane Coffee location last Saturday morning between 9:40am and 11:15am.

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) reports the customer visited a number of traders including Pete n Rosie's Deli, Q le Baker, Prahran Seafoods, John Cester's Poultry and Game, Gary's Quality Meats, Reliable Fruit and Veg and Market Lane Coffee.

"These two locations have now been listed as tier one sites this morning, and we use this opportunity to reach out to the over 900 people who checked into those venues under the QR code system," the minister says, noting how this case shows how important it is for contacts linked to exposure sites to stick to the 14-day isolation period.

"There is every chance that many of those 19,000 people who we are monitoring as primary close contacts can turn positive."

There has been no change on yesterday regarding the number of people in hospital (5) or in intensive care (1), and the total cases reported over the past 10 days has now reached 133 in relation to this outbreak as a result of what Foley described as "the Sydney incursion of COVID-19".

Foley highlights a positive development in terms of the successful isolation of positive cases.

"Three days ago, some 6 per cent of the daily cases were isolating for the entirety of their infectious period. Yesterday that was 73 per cent and today it's 92 per cent," he says.

"This shows that our combination of measures that have [been] put together in our public health toolkit are starting to work in the direction that we want, giving our contact tracers the time and the resources and the opportunity they need to get ahead of this virus."

Updated at 12:07pm AEST on 22 July 2021.