Victoria has announced another 471 coronavirus cases today as the state's harsh stage 4 lockdown gets underway.
It comes a day after Victoria suffered its worst 24 hours of the Covid-19 pandemic with a record 725 new cases and 15 deaths, including the youngest victim so far – a man in his early 30s.
Leaked modelling has suggested the deadly second wave will get much worse before it gets better, with predictions of daily case numbers peaking at more than 1000 in the coming weeks.
"It's the numbers we don't want to see and we hope always the modelling is wrong," Austin Hospital Covid-19 ward leader Associate Professor Jason Trubiano told Nine's Today.
Stage 4 to cost $9 billion
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has revealed the updated Treasury modelling on the impact of Victoria's new restrictions on the Australian economy.
In the September quarter, the impact on Australia's real gross domestic product will be between $7 billion and $9 billion.
Combined with the previous stage 3 lockdown, the full cost will be "in the order of $10 billion to $12 billion, detracting some 2.5 per cent from quarterly real GDP growth".
Unemployment is now expected to peak at 9.25 per cent possibly "closer to 10 per cent", Morrison said.
But he notes that does not reflect the true number of "effectively unemployed" people, which is now expected to increase by between 250,000 to 400,000 people.
"That isn't necessarily people who have lost their employment but it also includes those whose employment has been reduced to zero hours," he said.
"The effective unemployment rate is the one we're watching."
Morrison says the effective unemployment rate had fallen to just over 11 per cent but was now expected to head back up to the "high 13s".
"That is very concerning, that is very troubling but it is not unexpected," he said.
"In the circumstances these measures will have a very significant cost, and it will impact the recovery path, but the task doesn't change. We get on top of this issue in Victoria and we band together and we make this work."
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