An epidemiologist says Melbourne should’ve been placed into lockdown a fortnight ago, and she has called for the state to adopt a different measurement method to gauge the spread of COVID-19.

UNSW Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, Mary Louise McLaws, says the lockdown ideally should’ve begun by June 25.

“The time to act would’ve been between the 18th of June and the 25th,” she told Dee Dee.

Professor McLaws says that’s the period when the 14-day cumulative case number doubled and called for analysis of 14-day rolling figures to determine how coronavirus is spreading.

“From the 25th of June to the 2nd of July it then became 500 over a 14 day period,” she said.

“Yesterday, looking back … that number was over 1000 cases.

“The reason you do the 14 days is because people can take seven days to get infected, or they can take twice that.”

But Professor McLaws said she understands why the lockdown wasn’t reintroduced earlier.

“That would’ve been a brave act, because the community wouldn’t have seen it as being necessary because what they would’ve seen in the 25th was really a daily number of around 20 or 30,” she said.

Press PLAY below for the full interview.