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Victoria records one new locally acquired case of COVID-19

The Sandringham dry-cleaning business in Melbourne has been listed as a tier-one exposure site.

The Sandringham dry-cleaning business in Melbourne has been listed as a tier-one exposure site. Photo: Google Maps

Victoria has recorded one locally acquired case of COVID-19, the primary close contact of a known case who was in quarantine for their infectious period.

Officials also reported three new overseas cases on Saturday morning, all in hotel quarantine.

It is not yet known whether the case is linked to a Melbourne man who tested positive after returning from Sydney last weekend.

Health Minister Martin Foley said on Friday Victorians could rest assured that two local cases recorded on the previous day would not lead to rampant further infections.

He said he was confident the few additional infections would not impact on the school holidays.

“We have in place a system for the next two weeks that we are confident can withstand any of the challenges that the public health team have identified so far,” he told reporters.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton confirmed the two infections had been linked genomically to the Sydney outbreak and its Delta virus variant.

Henry Li, who has owned Sandringham Dry Cleaners in Melbourne’s southeast for 19 years, and his colleague are in hotel quarantine after testing positive.

Mr Li’s colleague – an Oakleigh man in his 60s – tested positive on Thursday after returning from Sydney at the weekend, then Mr Li also tested positive.

“It’s terrible – we did everything carefully, we still got it. I don’t know what happened,” Mr Li told 3AW.

He said they wore masks at work, used hand sanitiser and made sure customers checked in with a QR code.

Mr Li is in good health but says his employee is struggling with “quite serious symptoms”.

The Oakleigh man is believed to have contracted the virus during a party at his daughter’s house in West Hoxton in Sydney – the suburb was a “green zone” at the time.

That Saturday night party has since been declared a super-spreader event.

The man returned to Melbourne on Jetstar flight JQ523, which left Sydney at 5.30pm on Sunday.

The flight has been listed as a tier-one exposure site, meaning 126 passengers on board plus flight crew must get tested and isolate for 14 days.

The man took a bus from the airport to Broadmeadows and boarded a train from Broadmeadows to Flinders Street, then Flinders Street to Oakleigh to get home.

The bus and two trains are tier-two sites, meaning any other commuters will need to isolate until they get a negative test result.

The three train stations and a number of shops including a Woolworths in Burwood East and a shopping centre, fruit shop and Asian grocery in Forest Hill are also exposure sites.

The Sandringham dry-cleaning business has been listed as a tier-one site and about 100 customers are being traced.

Mr Foley said 13,000 people who had travelled from Greater Sydney since June 11 had been contacted and asked to get tested because of the outbreak in the NSW capital.

The health department confirmed 21,991 tests were processed in the 24 hours to Friday morning, while 18,019 Victorians received a vaccine dose at one of the state-run hubs.

-with AAP

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