Below are some salient snippets of information from msn news on the West Melbourne Cluster (Jervis Bay) = Delta Variant.
An additional child has been reported as being likely to test positive with the Delta Variant.
The West Melbourne family visited Jervis Bay about two weeks ago, from May 19 to 24. Their son and daughter attended school from May 25 to 27, before Melbourne went into lockdown, testing positive for coronavirus on Tuesday.
The new cluster has been linked back to a West Melbourne family of four who had recently returned from holidaying in Jervis Bay in NSW and has since spread to two adults and a grade 5 pupil of another family, whose children attend the same North Melbourne Primary School.
Their working theory is that the virus was transmitted in the school's year 5 classroom between two children. The first grade 5 student infected was at school for up to three days while infectious.
A second family was tested on Thursday after being asked to isolate and two adults and a child emerged as new cases on Friday. A second child also returned an indeterminate result, but is likely to test positive.
A North Melbourne Primary School father who has sons in grade 3 and 5 said parents were alarmed by reports the new variant was more infectious.
"You just have to hope you're that majority who haven't contracted it and come out of the other side OK," he said.
His family are undertaking two weeks of quarantine as their son in grade 5 is considered a close contact of the infected pupils. The family have all tested negative.
He said the school had many shared-learning areas and there was mingling between year levels, which had worried parents.
"My son is in year 5 and it's kind of a flexible area which is open learning so if it was a highly contagious spread it could go very quickly through that area," he said.
Note: One reason why a test may be indeterminate is that they are in the very early stages and their viral load is very low. If so, testing again after an interval will if they are infected allow the virus time to have multiply and this will then achieve a positive test result.
and
More than 300 primary close contacts have been identified in the West Melbourne outbreak. So far, about 70 per cent have tested negative.
and
Paediatrician and researcher at Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Margie Danchin, who is investigating COVID-19 transmission in Australian schools, led a team screening casual contacts at North Melbourne Primary School at the weekend to determine how far the virus had spread.
"The families involved in this outbreak are understandably really struggling," she said. "I don't think the community really understands just how hard it is for families with a positive child, who feel like they have been responsible for all of this testing and the school shutting down."
Though perhaps it could be.
