Coronavirus crisis: Victoria records three deaths, 397 cases

Victoria has recorded three more deaths from coronavirus, taking the national toll above 200, with 397 new cases of COVID-19 reported overnight.

Saturday’s figure is a significant drop on Thursday’s peak of 723, but the three deaths takes State toll to 116 and Australia’s tally to 201.

Thirty-seven of the new cases are linked to known outbreaks while 360 remain under investigation.

Victoria’s lockdown restrictions could be extended past the initial mid-August expiry if daily case numbers remained high, Mr Andrews had previously warned.

The premier has also been frustrated by people disobeying public health orders. Australian Defence Force personnel and public health officials have been visiting homes of positive cases to find many people were not there and therefore failing to isolate.

Victoria’s aged care facilities have been among those hardest hit by the virus, with all residents from St Basil’s at suburban Faulkner relocated to hospitals as staff were ordered into self-isolation.

Meanwhile, Queenslanders have been put on alert about a string of locations around greater Brisbane that a man visited before testing positive to COVID-19.

The 27-year-old Bellbird Park man - the Sunshine State only case of COVID-19 reported on Friday - is believed to have caught the virus when he ate at the same restaurant as an infected woman charged with illegally entering the State.

The man is a direct contact of one of three women returning from Melbourne who allegedly lied on their border passes.

He is believed to have caught the virus when dining with his family at the Madtongsan IV Korean restaurant at Sunnybank on July 23.

“Along with five others who are being COVID-19 tested, they dined on a table adjacent to one of the recently identified cases who returned from Victoria,” a Queensland Health spokesperson said in a statement.

The man and his family, two of whom work in an aged care home, are in quarantine as authorities track down all their close contacts.

Health authorities say the man visited the Garden City Shopping Centre in Mount Gravatt on Sunday and Bunnings stores in Springfield and Oxley on Monday, as well as businesses at Wacol, Richlands and Forest Lake.