Victoria Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton has defended his use of the term “beast” to describe the Kappa variant of COVID-19 arguing he was trying to “warn against complacency” and motivate people to “follow the rules”.
Professor Sutton has been accused of overreacting and inducing an unwarranted level of fear because of his rhetoric surrounding the Kappa variant of the virus and two cases which turned out to be false positives.
“I do like to warn against complacency but all of the statements that I made about the Kappa variant, the primary one that we’re dealing with in Melbourne, were factual, they relate to the fact that we absolutely have to chase every single case down, we need to get back to COVID zero, that’s a significant challenge,” he said.
“So when I use the term beast … I’m trying to warn against complacency and motivate everyone to get tested to isolate, to follow the rules.
“I think Victorians have done a magnificent job in that regard.
“The fact that we’re getting 50,000 tests per day, that’s five per cent of Victoria [that] has been tested in the last week, that is a huge part of being able to get on top of this”.
