MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia’s second most populous state, Victoria, entered a five-day shutdown on Saturday as authorities rushed to prevent a third wave of COVID-19 cases caused by the British variant with high infections.
A new locally acquired case was confirmed in the last 24 hours, health officials said on Saturday, bringing the number of cases related to a quarantine hotel at Melbourne airport to 14 and the total number of active cases in the state at 20.
“It simply came to our notice then. That’s not the position the Victorians wanted to be in, but I can’t have the situation where in two weeks we look back and wish we had made those decisions now, ”Victoria’s Prime Minister Andrews told Andrews on Saturday.
International flights to Melbourne will stop until Wednesday, after five en route, with about 100 passengers, landing on Saturday.
The 14 cases in the airport cluster are due to the highly infectious British variant of the new coronavirus. So far, only direct contacts of hotel workers have been positive.
“It simply came to our notice then. In Victoria there is concern about outreach to the community, ”Australian medical director Paul Kelly told reporters.
The streets of central Melbourne, the state capital and its suburbs, were almost empty on Saturday, and people were ordered to stay home for all but essential shopping, two hours away. outdoor exercise, care or work that cannot be done from home.
Among the “essential” work, the game continued at the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tennis event of the year that runs until February 21, which continued, but fans were banned until Wednesday. Thousands were forced to leave mid-Friday before midnight.
The players missed the buzz of the crowd.
“It was a little disturbing, in a way sad. … I just tried to focus on my game, ”Elina Svitolina said after winning her third-round match.
The closing, which has closed restaurants and cafes for all but takeaways, worked in the same way that Melbourne had prepared for the biggest weekend in almost a year, with Lunar New Year celebrations, St. Valentine and Australian Open crowd.
Last year, Melbourne suffered a 111-day shutdown, one of the strictest and longest in the world at the time, to curb a coronavirus outbreak that left more than 800 dead.
“It’s the busiest weekend for us. I’m sitting here making 178 heartbreaking calls to see if I can get them to book again, ”said Will Baa, owner of Lover, a restaurant in the modern Windsor neighborhood.
“Only the fingers that only extend over the short five-day period were crossed,” he said.
More generally, Australia is ranked among the most successful countries in the world when it comes to dealing with the pandemic, largely due to decisive closures and sealed borders to all but a string of travelers. With a population of 25 million, there have been about 22,200 community cases and 909 deaths.
New Zealand on Saturday reported the death of a patient with COVID-19. This case has not yet been included in the total of 25 deaths from COVID-19 in the country.
Report by Sonali Paul; Edited by Michael Perry / Peter Rutherford