Photo/Illutration People wearing face masks to help protect against the spread of the new coronavirus walk outside Flinders Street Station in Melbourne on July 23. (AAP Image via AP)

MELBOURNE--Australia’s hard-hit Victoria state on Monday posted a new daily record of 532 new COVID-19 cases, and the government leader warned that a lockdown in the city of Melbourne would continue while infected people continued to go to work.

Melbourne is almost halfway through a six-week lockdown aimed at curbing community spread of coronavirus. Mask-wearing in Australia’s second-largest city became compulsory last week.

The new cases and six deaths reported on Monday surpasses a previous record of 484 new infections reported on Wednesday last week.

Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said the biggest driver of the new infections was people continuing to go to work after showing symptoms.

“This is what is driving these numbers up and the lockdown will not end until people stop going to work with symptoms and instead go and get tested,” Andrews said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for patience in Victoria.

“There has been significant community transmission in Victoria. That will take some time to get on top of,” Morrison said.

In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:

VIETNAM has postponed its hosting of Asia’s largest security forum, which includes North Korea, and an annual meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers by a month to September due to the pandemic. Two Southeast Asian diplomats said Monday that Vietnam, which leads the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year, hopes to hold face to face meetings in mid-September instead of doing them by online video due to travel restrictions if the annual gatherings were to be held as originally scheduled later this week. The 10-nation bloc hosts the ASEAN Regional Forum, which brings together its top diplomats with counterparts from the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India, the two Koreas and other Asia Pacific countries to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and other security issues. Most of about 1,300 ASEAN meetings this year have so far been shifted online due to the pandemic.

NEW ZEALAND health authorities say they will trace and test people who came into contact with a traveler from the country who tested positive for the coronavirus after arriving in South Korea last week. Health Minister Chris Hipkins says they’ve also asked for South Korean authorities to undertake a second test to make sure the passenger has the virus. It has been nearly three months since the last case of community transmission was found in New Zealand and any proof the passenger caught the virus while in New Zealand would come as a big shock to the nation of 5 million people. Health officials in New Zealand say their counterparts in South Korea suspect the traveler was infected while in transit in Singapore. “We have got our contact tracing system kicking into gear though,” Hipkins said.

CHINA on Monday reported 61 new cases of coronavirus, spread between its northeastern and northwestern regions. The Xinjiang region in the northwest reported 41 new cases, while Liaoning and Jilin provinces in the northeast saw a combined 16. Another four cases were brought by Chinese travelers from outside the country. China has reported 4,634 deaths among 83,891 cases of COVID-19.

SOUTH KOREA reported 25 new cases, bringing its national caseload to 14,175 infections and 299 deaths. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 16 of the new cases were tied to people arriving from abroad. The country in past days has reported dozens of cases among crew members of a Russia-flagged cargo ship docked in Busan and hundreds of South Korean construction workers airlifted from virus-ravaged Iraq. Eight of the nine local transmissions were from the Seoul metropolitan area.