The Australian state of Victoria has recorded 10 new locally transmitted cases of COVID-19.
More than 18,000 people were tested on Friday, as the state seeks to get its latest outbreak of the deadly virus under control.
None of the newly infected are in hospital at this stage. Two of the 10 were in New South Wales (NSW), but counted amongst the Victorian total as that's where they normally live, the Victoria Department of Health and Human Services said on Saturday.
The double-digit total comes after Victoria shut its border with NSW. All of the new cases have been genetically linked to the outbreak in NSW, officials said. People in NSW won't be allowed back into Victoria even if they live there, testing chief Jeroen Weimar said.
"Let's be very clear - we do not have capacity to put hundreds of people into hotel quarantine because they elected to come home late," he said on Friday, reported Melbourne paper The Age. "If there are people who’ve gone to NSW, we did not design and set up a hotel quarantine system to enable people who’ve gone on holidays in NSW to come back a bit later."
Two more cases were announced in the state's hotel quarantine facilities.
There are 29 active cases in Victoria now - New Zealand for comparison has 55, but none from local transmission.
There were 52 cases of local transmission in NSW in the week to December 31, when the state's health service last updated its website.
"We need to make sure that we stay ahead of this cluster and we take all the necessary measures we can to make sure that we bring it under control as soon as possible," Victoria Health Minister Martin Foley said in comments reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.
"We've been quite consistent for some time now, in fact for two weeks, that the deteriorating position in New South Wales was of significant concern... We make no apologies for closing the border."
