On Sunday, the state's two new locally-acquired COVID-19 cases were both linked to the Holiday Inn, bringing the number of cases linked to the hotel's cluster to 16.

Tensions were already high in Victoria over the Australian Open tennis tournament and its squadron of more than 500 players, officials and support staff arriving from overseas.

With debate still simmering over the merits of continuing with international sporting events - especially while "ordinary" Australians stranded overseas are facing severely rationed spaces to fly home - this latest Victorian outbreak will again test the Andrews Labor government.

That's without the added health concerns of the clearly more infectious UK virus variant making its way into the Victorian community.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews last week described the UK variant of COVID-19 as "hyper-infectious" and moving at "hyper-speed".

Hopefully, the "short, sharp blast" of lockdown restrictions, as Mr Andrews called them, will be enough to curtail the spread. It's an inescapable reality, now, that all travel into Australia carries risks for this nation.

With fewer than 29,000 cases, we have avoided the truly catastrophic outbreaks of COVID that have wreaked havoc globally: confirmed case numbers are approaching 108 million, with more than 2.3 million coronavirus-related fatalities.

Arguments over whether to continue with professional sport at such a fraught time in history will continue to bounce back and forth.

Highly paid athletes make easy targets for those who don't share the view that sport provides a welcome public service by distracting us, if only momentarily, from the pandemic's pervasive gloom.

MORE COMMENT

Yes, there is good news.

The vaccines are coming, and COVID daily case numbers and death rates are, finally, falling - and hopefully for good.

But we are by no means out of the woods.