The returned travellers are a woman aged in her 20s and a child aged under 10.There are currently 11 active cases of COVID-19 in Victoria. Ten of these are in people in hotel quarantine and the remaining case is in a teenage girl who is isolating at home after contracting the virus in NSW.Monday is the 59th consecutive day where Victoria has recorded zero daily community transmission cases.Nearly 6000 Victorians were tested on Sunday, prompting praise from chief health officer Brett Sutton.“There has been an excellent response to our call for testing over the past week with higher than expected numbers of people getting tested in lead up to Christmas, but we must remain vigilant over the festive season and anyone with symptoms is urged get tested immediately,” he said.NSW PATIENT ZERO MAY REMAIN A MYSTERYNSW health authorities are warning the identity of patient zero in the explosive northern beaches cluster in Sydney “may never be solved” as the outbreak continues to grow. It comes as a further seven locally transmitted cases of coronavirus were diagnosed in NSW, all but one linked to the northern beaches cluster.Two weeks after the start of the outbreak, NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said authorities were no closer to finding the source, but were pursuing about 12 lines of inquiry.“We‘re pursuing a lot of avenues,” she said. “We have the sequence data on the Avalon virus strain and we know that it matches most likely to US origin. “We know that there was one person who arrived from overseas who was in hotel quarantine who had a close — not identical, but a similar — strain, so that’s obviously a line of inquiry.
“You can imagine we are doing a lot of testing and sometimes we will never be able to definitively conclude that (source of the cluster) because people clear the virus and if you have cleared the virus, we then are basing it on serological studies and we can never then check absolutely.”Six of Sunday’s seven new cases were confirmed as part of the Avalon cluster.The seventh case was “under investigation”, but Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the person had attended the Belrose Hotel.Dr Chant said the seventh case was a firefighter in his 20s who lived on the northern beaches.“What we know is that this young gentleman in his 20s has one of the earliest onset of illnesses in the cluster,” she said.“What we‘re looking for is the missing link — who else was present at the Belrose.“Anyone who was at the Belrose Hotel any time between 12 and 6pm on December 11, we’re asking you to get a test, irrespective of whether you have symptoms or not … and please isolate until you get that negative test.”Sunday’s new cases come after NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard blew up over “appalling” scenes on Bronte Beach, where Santa hat-wearing backpackers gathered in hundreds to celebrate Christmas. He said the group’s actions could lead to a “superspreader event”, and said it was clear the group “didn’t give a damn about Sydney”.NSW Police said they had seen an increase in big gatherings requiring “significant clean-up efforts”. They said they would ramp up patrols over the New Year to ensure people celebrated in a safe way.
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