Two women who flew from Sydney to Melbourne while infected with COVID-19 have been fined $5452 each.
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Victoria's COVID-19 Commander Jeroen Weimar revealed the women boarded Qantas flight QF471 on Monday afternoon without valid permits.
Authorities checked the duo's permits when they landed at Melbourne Airport and they were immediately taken to hotel quarantine, where they tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday.
All 46 people on the flight have been contacted and will be required to quarantine for 14 days.
"What on earth they thought they were doing, I can only speculate," Mr Weimar told reporters on Thursday.
He said the incident proved the need for Victoria's strict border restrictions.
"The consequences of these two positive cases not having been stopped, being positive in the community and then spreading through Melbourne and Victoria - we do not need two more incursions of this type," Mr Weimar said.
Of the 6000 passengers checked at Melbourne Airport during the past month, 190 have been put into hotel quarantine and 65 were sent back on return flights for not having the correct permit.
NSW was designated an 'extreme risk zone' under Victoria's travel permit system on July 23, with exemptions only granted in exceptional circumstances or for permitted workers.
The women were not counted among the 21 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases reported in Victoria on Thursday, a figure that includes four mystery infections.
The unlinked cases involve a man from Melbourne's inner north and three cases across two separate households in Glenroy, one of whom is a child who attends Glenroy West Primary School.
There is no obvious crossover between the two families, who don't know each other and their children do not attend the same school or sports club.
"Seeing something pop up that's not on the radar yet is a little bit disturbing," Mr Weimar said.
COVID-19 has been detected in wastewater in the Glenroy area since August 5.
Seventeen of the new cases are linked to known outbreaks, while 15 were in quarantine during their infectious periods.
It was also revealed on Thursday that infection control breaches at the Moonee Valley testing site led to a traffic controller becoming infected last month.
The man contracted the virus after using the same toilet block as people being tested at the site.
"That should not have occurred. That's now been dealt with and dealt with at all of our other testing sites," Mr Weimar said.
It comes as the state and federal governments announced $367 million worth of grants for Melbourne businesses struggling through the city's extended sixth lockdown.
Victorian Industry Support and Recovery Minister Martin Pakula said more than $1 billion has been put into business bank accounts since the May-June lockdown.
"We will continue to support businesses as we need to," he said.
Melbourne's lockdown has been extended to at least August 19, in part due to the emergence of new mystery cases on Wednesday.
Those cases have since been genomically linked to the wider Hobsons Bay outbreak.
Australian Associated Press
