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Brett Sutton: Chief Health Officer's coronavirus vow to Victorians

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has made a valiant vow to residents as the state begins showing signs of a stabilisation in coronavirus cases.

Addressing media on Sunday, Professor Sutton said he would do everything in his power to keep daily cases from skyrocketing in the state.

“We're not going to see [daily cases in their] 300s and 400s again in Victoria, not under my watch at least,” he told reporters.

“It would be great to see numbers going down even further, but I still do expect that we're on a trajectory.”

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton at a coronavirus media conference.
Brett Sutton vowed to not allow cases to climb "under my watch". Source: AAP

Prof Sutton strongly urged people to continue complying with strict rules and to still only leave their homes for essential reasons.

He said the transmission still occurring was often due to people forgetting to do simple things like cleaning their hands or covering their face.

“Sometimes because people have forgotten those really basic but very essential elements, not washing your hands that one time, forgetting your mask, not wearing it properly [or] hugging someone who's outside your household,” he said.

“These are simple but also easy to forget. We’ve got ingrained habits we're trying to turn around and re-enforcing those messages as was seen in those TV commercials yesterday.”

He was referencing the rollout of a series of ads featuring Australian personalities like Kath and Kim’s Sharon Strzelecki designed to bolster important coronavirus messaging.

“It’s just really important things to amplify that message to as many in the community as possible and if it can reach just a few more people or make it a bit more habitual for us to do those simple, but really important things, then that's really essential messaging,” Prof Sutton said.

A woman being tested for coronavirus. Victorians are being urged to remain vigilant as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
Cases in Victoria seem to be stabilising slightly, but residents are urged to remain vigilant. Source: AAP

His message comes after he issued a “note of caution” on Friday, explaining heightened attention needed to be paid to curbing transmission from outbreaks.

“We're going into a challenging phase in the next couple of weeks... even as community transmission goes down, those complex outbreak settings that are really hard to get on top of transmission in the aged-care disability sector, even in our health services, they might end up with a baseline level of transmission that is harder to shift,” Prof Sutton said.

Victoria recorded 208 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday and a further 17 deaths – 11 of which were linked to aged-care outbreaks.

It came after two days of daily coronavirus cases being under 200 in Victoria, with health authorities hoping infections had slowed in the community.

Chief Health Officer praised

More than 22,000 people indicated their desire to give Professor Sutton a virtual hug after a Facebook event page called “Give the CHOttie a virtual hug! #HugtheCHOttie” was established.

The Victorian DHHS joined the praise on Sunday in a post to social media expressing gratitude to Prof Sutton.

“We know that thousands of you have signed up to give the Chief Health Officer a virtual hug, so we want to extend a big thank you to @VictorianCHO for all that he does to keep our community safe,” the post read.

The post attracted hundreds of comments and likes shortly after being posted.

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