According to new data that was leaked to The Australian, Victoria's daily coronavirus cases will rise to a shocking 1,1000 by the end of the next week.
This is according to a grim government forecast, and the numbers will stay this way for a further eight days.
The secret modelling by the Daniel Andrews government estimates cases will stay this high and won't fall below current levels until the end of August.
The modelling predicts that the daily average case numbers in Victoria won't return to pre-second-wave levels until October at the earliest.
There are currently now 7,227 active cases in Victoria with 2,280 having no known source.
The shocking modelling estimates that daily new cases will reach 693 by this Saturday.
It's also predicted there will be a surge of cases by the start of next week before hitting 800 new cases per day on Thursday.
Health authorities have been hoping the six-week lockdown and city-wide 8 pm curfew would cause cases to “decline quite rapidly”.
“What we're seeing happening in Victoria is based on the world's best evidence about responding to pandemics, about bringing outbreaks like this under control,” Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said.
“And what works is keeping people in their homes, keeping people away from other people, and preventing the transmission from one community member to another.
“What we hope to see over the next two weeks is the figures that we're currently seeing start to decline and hopefully decline quite rapidly.”
Epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely of Melbourne University told news.com.au that it would take two to three weeks for authorities to gauge the impact of the current stage four lockdown.
“The models should be able to show whether Victoria is on track to eliminate the virus in two to three months, which is critical information for policy makers,” he said.
“We don't have that information yet … so we can't do it accurately yet; we have to see how the case numbers change.”
This is a claim being strenuously denied by the Andrews government.
Photo credit: Daily Mail UK
This article originally appeared on Over60.