The Australian state at the centre of the country’s second wave coronavirus outbreak is deepening its contact tracing programme to try to maintain a steady decline in daily new cases, amid criticism of its handling of the crisis.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt told radio station 3AW that Victoria might have avoided a second wave and been able to ease restrictions sooner if its virus tracing system was more than like that of New South Wales (NSW).

State Premier Daniel Andrews, while not directly accepting criticism, said that he would set up five “suburban” contact tracing teams specialising in geographic parts of the state, which would make it easier to target specific locations where people had been infected.

He said he would also send representatives to larger NSW, which has kept its daily new infection rate below 22 since April, to observe practices there “to double and triple-check that there’s nothing that might be changed, or any insights, any experience”.