Coronavirus: Six more community COVID-19 cases in Victoria amid lockdown extension talks

Coronavirus: Six more community COVID-19 cases in Victoria amid lockdown extension talks
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Victoria's community COVID-19 outbreak continues to grow as health officials consider extending the Australian state's week-long lockdown.

Victoria's Department of Health on Wednesday morning revealed there had been six new local cases overnight - although one, a person who travelled to New South Wales, was already known about on Tuesday.

There are now 67 active cases in Victoria, with 51,033 tests conducted and 20,585 vaccine doses administered in the last 24 hours.

It comes as health officials consider extending Melbourne's coronavirus lockdown, which is for the time being scheduled to end at 11:59pm on Thursday (local time).

The talks come after Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on Tuesday night said the virus was spreading "faster than any other strain we've dealt with".

"We're seeing transmissions in settings and circumstances we've never seen before," he told media.

Victoria's COVID-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar says there have been cases infected through nothing but "very fleeting contact" - the first time officials have seen that.

"What we're seeing now clearly is people who are, they're brushing past each other in a small shop, they're going around a display home, they're looking at phones in a Telstra shop," he explained.

A press conference on Victoria's COVID-19 outbreak will be held at 1:30pm NZT.

There will also be huge interest in New South Wales case numbers after it was revealed one of the six new cases visited the state on May 24, creating a swathe of new exposure sites.