Urgent warning for AFL fans after potential Covid exposure
Fans of AFL teams Richmond Tigers and Geelong Cats who travelled by train after the teams' Friday night fixture are being urged to come forward for Covid-19 testing after potentially being exposed to the virus.
There were close to 55,000 fans present at the MCG for the fixture, with Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley saying hundreds of fans could have potentially been in contact with a positive community case identified on Tuesday.
An entire metro train service departing Flinders Street station at 10.20pm to Craigieburn has been identified as an exposure site.
It is currently a Tier 2 site meaning anyone on the service must get tested and isolate until they receive a negative result.
"The important part is to make sure that if you slow the slightest symptoms that you do the right thing, get tested," Mr Foley said.
The case is a returned traveller from India and spent quarantine in Adelaide. Mr Foley said the JQ771 flight he took from Adelaide to Melbourne on May 4 was unlikely an acquisition site, but out of an abundance of caution the Department of Health is asking the 100 or so people on the flight to get tested.
Penalties to be enforced for breaching QR checks
Mr Foley also warned that people will soon face tough penalties if they don't use QR check in codes at venues, after some patrons at a new exposure site failed to use the system.
The new positive case dined out at the CBD restaurant Curry Vault on Friday, but many people who were there at the same time failed to use the QR system.
Foley has described the incident as a "wake-up call" and said the next 48 hours were "critical".
SA authorities are examining whether the man contracted the virus before his arrival and had an unusually long incubation period, or caught it from a person in a neighbouring hotel room.
Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton suspects the man picked it up in the hotel, and not in India or during his international flights.
All three of the man's household contacts have tested negative.
With AAP
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