Melbourne returns to six week lockdown

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Metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire Council will return to stage three restrictions for six weeks as of midnight Wednesday, Premier Daniel Andrews has announced.

Hospitality businesses will return to takeaway only, visitors will not be allowed at homes and public gatherings will be limited to two people.
“These are unsustainably high numbers of new cases,” Mr Andrews said.

Why a six week lockdown?

The premier agreed the state could have gone for a shorter period.”The advice is – and it’s a genuine choice, you can go shorter and potentially have to extend it out,” Daniel Andrews said.

He said a three week lockdown would not provide enough data.

“The life cycle of this virus is about the 14-day period. The six weeks means we have three of those full cycles.

“If you are starting to see stability in low numbers, we’d have much greater confidence those are real numbers, rather than a false sense that the virus was not there anymore or at such low levels that a suppression strategy would be able to work.”

Victoria must turn the tide

Patrick Durkin

Victoria’s Chief Health officer Brett Sutton said there is a unanimous view this lockdown is needed to avoid catastrophic outcomes.”This is certainly awful advice to have to give to any government. But it is absolutely necessary,” he said.

“We’ve got six very difficult weeks ahead of us. But we have been through this before and we did it successfully. We turned the tide with our first wave of infections in Victoria … and we drove infections right down again.”

ADF will patrol Victoria-NSW border

Patrick Durkin

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews say he has asked Prime Minister Scott Morrison for help including 260 ADF personnel to monitor the borders between metropolitan and regional Victoria.”Just before this press conference, I spoke with the Prime Minister and informed him of the decisions that I had made on the advice of the chief health officer.

“I want to thank the Prime Minister for his consistent support and I also wanted to share with you that I have requested for the Prime Minister a number of further supports,” he said.

Only VCE students will return to school

Patrick Durkin

From Monday, Melbourne’s Year 11 and 12 students, VCE students and Year 10 students undertaking VCE subjects will still be able to return to as normal face to face learning.All other students will have their holidays extended for a week next week and be preparing to study from home.

There will be a supervised school holiday program for the children of essential workers.

Melbourne at greater risk than ever

Patrick Durkin

Premier Daniel Andrews has warned Melbourne is more at risk than before.”We are in a more precarious, challenging and potentially tragic position now than we were some months ago.”

Melbourne returns to lockdown

Patrick Durkin

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has confirmed a six week lockdown for metropolitan Melbourne after a record 191 new cases.”These are unsustainably high numbers of new cases. It is simply impossible with case rates at this level to have enough contact tracing staff, to have enough physical resources no matter where they come from, no matter what uniform they wear, in order to continue to suppress and contain this virus without taking significant steps,” Mr Andrews said.

“If we were to fail to take those steps, then it won’t be a couple of hundred cases per cay, it will be many more than that and will spiral well and truly out of control.”

The stage three lockdown from midnight tomorrow night mean residents will once again have only four reasons to leave their home.

The lockdown will also apply to Shire of Mitchell, the local government area in the Hume region of Victoria, north of Melbourne.

How the virus is moving

Here’s a chart showing how the virus has dispersed across Australia:

Credits: https://www.afr.com

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