There are 502 COVID-19 cases in hospital in Victoria – with 27 active cases in ICU, including 8 on a ventilator, and an additional 4 cleared cases in ICU.
This is the first time the number of COVID-19 cases in hospital in Victoria has exceed 500 since 11 February, this year.
6,210,799 vaccine doses have been administered by Victoria’s state-commissioned services, with 1,792 administered yesterday at state-run centres.
67.9 per cent of Victorians aged 18 and over have had three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. 94.6 per cent of Victorians aged 12 and over have had two doses.
10,305 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded yesterday. This includes 6,976 who tested positive on a Rapid Antigen Test and 3,329 who returned a positive result on a PCR test.
Sadly, the Department was notified of 9 deaths yesterday of people aged in their 70s, 80s and 90s. This brings the total number of deaths in Victoria since the pandemic began to 3,021.
There are 59,365 active cases in Victoria.
18,627 PCR tests were processed yesterday. The total number of PCR tests performed in Victoria since the pandemic began is 20,614,947.
Updates
New BA.2.12.1 Omicron detections in wastewater
Victorian health authorities are continuing wastewater surveillance after detections of the BA.2.12.1 and the BA.4 or BA.5 sub-variants in wastewater samples yesterday.
Two detections for the BA.2.12.1 are from the Tullamarine Airport water catchment and from a catchment that services the north-east of Melbourne.
In addition, genomic sequencing has identified three BA.2.12.1 cases from the southeast Melbourne catchment, where the BA.2.12.1 sub-variant was found in wastewater samples taken between 14-19 April.
One of the three cases is a historic case while two are recent infections.
There have been two further detections of the BA.4 or BA.5 Omicron strain in the catchments servicing the inner southern suburbs and northeast Donvale.
The BA.4 or BA.5 strain was first detected in Victoria in mid-April from the Tullamarine Airport catchment.
Health authorities will continue to sequence PCR samples from the wastewater catchments to better understand the prevalence and transmission of these strains.
Early evidence suggests the BA.2.12.1 strain is more transmissible than BA.2 but does not cause more severe disease.
The BA.2 strain continues to be the dominant strain in Victoria.
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