• Victoria is bracing for news of a snap lockdown in response to two new cases of COVID-19 detected in the community, multiple outlets report.
• It is understood the measure could be announced as early as Thursday afternoon.
• Earlier, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg hinted that Prime Minister Scott Morrison will reveal new financial support measures in the coming hours.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Victorian health officials are reportedly preparing to announce a snap COVID-19 lockdown as early as Thursday night, after the detection of two new local cases linked to the Melbourne Cricket Ground sparked a new contact-tracing scramble.

The ABC understands state officials are meeting to map out the new lockdown, which would be the city’s fifth since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The duration and conditions of any new lockdown are yet to be determined, the broadcaster states. State officials are yet to call a further press conference.

The Australian reports Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been informed of the meetings, and is slated to front the media early this afternoon.

Reports of those high-level meetings comes just hours after the state’s COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar revealed two new cases of COVID-19, on top of the ten cases officially recorded in Thursday’s numbers.

The new cases are linked to Saturday night’s AFL clash between Carlton and Geelong at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but Weimar said contact tracers are still investigating the precise chain of transmission, and how those new cases are linked to existing cases detected after visiting level two of the stadium’s Members’ Reserve.

“We do not believe they are known contacts of the other two positive cases we know were there,” Weimar told reporters. “Interviews are ongoing with those individuals as we speak.”

“I think both these cases put us in a serious situation,” he added.

Weimar said that contact tracing efforts attacking other fronts of the state’s outbreak have now “burned through” seven ‘rings’ of close and extended contacts.

“This is probably the fastest response we have ever seen to an outbreak that’s moving more quickly than we have ever seen in Victoria, or I suspect anywhere else in Australia,” he said.

Further tweaks to Victoria’s outbreak response were hinted at by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who on Thursday revealed further Commonwealth support is on the way.

“We will be making support available to Victoria and the Prime Minister will have more to say about those details later today,” Frydenberg told reporters, while addressing the latest labour force figures — which would usually have been cause for optimism.

More to come.

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