Victorians are waking to their fourth lockdown in 15 months, once again sparked by hotel quarantine, but the state’s chief health officer said it was “absurd” to blame a failure of contact tracing. More than 10,000 close contacts have been identified as the Melbourne cluster grew to 26 infections on Thursday, and virus detectives are racing to track everyone down. The list of exposure sites also swelled to more than 100 locations.

Source: 10,000 contacts and 100 exposure sites as Victoria lockdown begins