Infectious diseases doctor shares hopeful outlook on Victoria’s COVID-19 outbreak

An infectious diseases physician has shared an encouraging view on Victoria’s COVID-19 outbreak.

Professor at ANU Medical School, Peter Collignon, who is also a member of the Infection Control Expert Group which advises the federal government on the pandemic, says “signs are at the moment that Victoria is doing well”.

He says the fact there has only been one mystery case identified so far is encouraging.

“What that means is most of those (COVID-positive) people, if not all of them, should have already been in isolation,” Professor Collignon told Neil Mitchell.

“If we keep on doing the things we’ve done very successfully, we should, again, be able to control this and stop it from spreading.”

Professor Collignon also shared how many more cases he expects to see in Victoria’s outbreak, if mystery cases stay low.

“There’s over 4000 close contacts identified and you expect one or two per cent of them may well develop the infection,” he said.

“I would expect, at the moment, you might see between 40 and 80 cases overall appear over this period of time, provided there’s not unknown spread in the community.”

The infectious diseases doctor questioned the need for lockdown in regional Victoria.

“There’s a lot of people that live in regional Victoria and so far the news all looks good and I think it is pretty arguable whether you need to continue a lockdown for those people,” he said.

Press PLAY below to hear Professor Collignon’s hopeful outlook