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Victoria on high alert after new Covid case

Victoria has been put on high alert after detecting a Covid-19 case in the community on Tuesday.

The Department of Health said the case, a male in his 30s, had recently returned to South Australia from overseas where he underwent hotel quarantine.

He returned to his home in Wollert in Melbourne's north on May 4 and was tested on Monday before health authorities confirmed his positive test this morning.

Contact tracers are currently establishing his exposure sites.

The man is isolating as are his household contacts who will be urgently tested.

A new case in Melbourne's north has been detected on Tuesday. Source: AAP
A new case in Melbourne's north has been detected on Tuesday. Source: AAP

It is the first local case in the state in more than 10 weeks when two cases on February 26 were linked to the Holiday Inn quarantine leak cluster.

In recent weeks the Department of Health has urged residents in scores of Melbourne suburbs to get tested following the detection of viral fragments in wastewater.

It comes as NSW health authorities continue to search for a missing link that connects a positive case in hotel quarantine to an infected couple from Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.

Victoria recorded nearly 13,000 tests in the previous 24 hours, significantly more than the 7,724 tests in NSW for the same period.

Health authorities speculate over infection's source

Following the case's announcement, South Australia's Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said the infected man in Victoria was staying in the Playford medi-hotel during his quarantine period where a person in an adjacent room had tested positive.

That guest was later moved to a different facility.

She said genomic testing would be able to confirm whether he contracted the virus inside the Playford medi-hotel from the other guest.

Water rescue puts officers in isolation

Meanwhile Victoria Police officers are in isolation after rescuing a man believed to have jumped from an oil tanker in Melbourne.

The 31-year-old Georgian national was rescued in Port Phillip Bay on Sunday night, about 5km from where the international tanker had docked.

The man is expected to be transferred to mandatory quarantine once released from hospital.

The police air wing found the man clinging to a navigational marker.

The water police officers who rescued the man then went into isolation as a precaution.

With AAP

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