Member for Mallee, Anne Webster, spoke with Rafael Epstein on ABC 774 yesterday about the current Mildura COVID Outbreak:

“Well, the lockdown is working as well as every other lockdown that we’ve had. We’re all quite used to them as you know. And people are, generally speaking complying. I think it’s a bit more real this time, of course, with 95 current cases of COVID. So look, there’s serious concern. And I’d say that the community, look we’re resilient. But I think that there’s a degree of fragility also you know, in how people are coping,” Dr Webster said.

“I think that the focus is fundamentally on community transmission, the fact that it is in the community as opposed to exposure sites, Jeroen (Weimar) just did say to me then that it’s not Coles, it’s not Woolworths, it’s not restaurants. It is out in the community. And we know that it is, you know, some, about over 50% of the cases are in our indigenous community. And there’s, you know, concern about that and, and concern for our homeless and, you know, the vulnerable cohorts of people who live in this area.”

“So I’m just really pleased that DHHS are here that the testing tracing teams are really ramping it up now. And we look forward to seeing a bit more support for those, you know, like MDAS, they’ve been doing a sterling job, and the hospital, and they need the additional support, obviously, in a crisis like this.”