New uptick in COVID-19 positive cases among members of the Greek community following Easter celebrations

Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) for sale at a chemist in Melbourne last week. Photo: AAP/Joel Carrett

Many Melburnian’s, among them dozens of Greek Australians are receiving positive RAT and PCR tests at the moment.

According to information received by Neos Kosmos, many of those infections relate to Greek Orthodox Easter celebration gatherings.

Most of the COVID-affected members of the community are having mild symptoms and are currently isolating at home but there are reports of people experiencing heavier symptoms and longer periods of illness.

The case numbers within the community mainly concern individuals that had managed to avoid contracting COVID-19 to date, some who are sick with the virus for a second time and a person that -for medical reasons only received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine- has been infected with coronavirus for the third time since the pandemic.

Former World Health Organisation adviser Adrian Esterman said the emergence of the two new strains in Australia will likely lead to more COVID-19 cases because they are “much stronger” than the current dominant strain BA.2. A traveller from South Africa into NSW has been identified as the first person in Australia with the BA.4 sub-variant of Omicron, while Victoria’s health department has detected the BA.2.12.1 Omicron strain in Melbourne wastewater.

“What we know about BA.4 is that it appears to escape the immune system a bit better than BA.2, so that means that people who’ve already been infected can be re-infected more easily, and people who are vaccinated can be infected more easily,” University of South Australia epidemiologist Esterman told 7News stressing the risk of removing all our public health measures.

“The good news is so many people have been infected now and those who haven’t been infected probably have quite good immune systems from being vaccinated, so we have got a bit of protection from major increases in cases from these two sub-variants.”

The Victorian health department reported on 15 April that BA.4 or BA.5 had been detected in wastewater samples taken from the Tullamarine catchment but there have been no further detections since.

When asked about prevention, Mr Esterman said the reintroduction of COVID-19 restrictions in Australia could be necessary.

“If we shut our borders to all of Africa, because it’s also in Botswana, then perhaps we could delay it,” he said. “But we won’t do that. And that means we’re almost certain to get the BA.4 in Australia. We just have to wait and, if necessary, we introduce some public health measures.”

S:neoskosmos.com