As Australia is hit by a second wave of the coronavirus outbreak, health experts and community leaders say COVID-19 racism has shifted from targeting only Asians at the start of the year to other migrant groups in recent months. They further suggest that when tensions appeared in the past, it was the immigrant that was often on the firing line.

In June, several Melbourne suburbs with large culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations were highlighted as Victorian COVID-19 hot spots . The following month, public housing towers in Flemington and North Melbourne were put under lockdown residents were primarily from refugee and migrant backgrounds, and many were Muslims. In both cases, these communities felt they were blamed for the spread of the virus .