Coronavirus update for Victoria 18 March 2022

There are 199 COVID-19 cases in hospital in Victoria – with 11 active cases in ICU, including 5 on a ventilator, and an additional 12 cleared cases in ICU.

6,053,948 vaccine doses have been administered by Victoria’s state-commissioned services, with 4,656 administered yesterday at state-run centres. 1,682 of the doses administered yesterday were for children aged 5 to 11 years, with 1,583 of these second doses.

63.4 per cent of Victorians aged 18 and over have had three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. 94.2 per cent of Victorians aged 12 and over have had two doses. 56.7 per cent of Victorians aged between 5 and 11 years have had one dose.

9,036 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded yesterday. This includes:

  • 5,872 who tested positive on a Rapid Antigen Test
  • 3,164 who returned a positive result on a PCR test.

Sadly, the Department was notified yesterday of nine deaths of people aged in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Eight of these deaths occurred in the past week and one occurred in early March.

This brings the total number of deaths in Victoria since the pandemic began to 2,673.

There are 47,242 active cases in Victoria.

20,651 PCR tests were processed yesterday. The total number of PCR tests performed in Victoria since the pandemic began is 19,783,260.

Updates

Detections of Omicron BA.2 variant in wastewater

Further analysis of wastewater testing results show that the BA.2 sub-lineage of the Omicron variant is widely distributed, with samples taken between 19 February and 4 March showing the Omicron BA.2 subvariant present in 88 per cent of 66 Victorian water catchments.

The Omicron BA.2 sub-lineage is detected at higher levels (adjusted for sub-lineage) than the Omicron BA.1 subvariant in more than half of all catchments.

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