Melbourne fell at midnight on Wednesday.
Sydney:
Australia’s second largest city Melbourne returned to isolation at midnight on Wednesday, forcing five million Australians to stay home for all but essential business for the next six weeks to contain an outbreak of coronavirus.
State police patrolled the city and installed checkpoints on main roads to prevent people from heading to the regions and spreading the virus of what is now Australia’s pandemic epicenter, with 860 active cases.
“The window for police discretion is very small and closes because the threat to public health and safety created by those who violate the directions of the medical officer of health is too great,” Victoria police said in a communicated.
The cafes, bars, restaurants and gymnasiums that have reopened recently have had to close again. Police made no comment on whether anyone had been arrested or fined since midnight.
The renewed foreclosure follows the closure of Australia’s busiest national border between Victoria and the most populous state of New South Wales on Tuesday evening.
“The rest of the country knows that the sacrifice you are experiencing right now is not just for you and your own family, but for the Australian community as a whole,” said Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Morrison said he would take a proposal to heads of state and territory on Friday to slow the number of Australian citizens and permanent residents returning from abroad. The two groups are the only arrivals allowed since Australia closed its international border in March.
New Zealand announced on Tuesday that its national airline will not accept new incoming bookings for three weeks to reduce the burden of overflowing quarantine facilities.
In Australia, red flags have been raised by potential quarantine violations which, according to the Victoria state government, have led returnees to spread the virus.
Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria, which reported 134 new infections on Wednesday, down from yesterday’s record 191 but well above small single-digit daily increases elsewhere in the country.
Fears of a second, larger wave were highlighted by an official report of three new cases of COVID-19 in the national capital, Canberra. Last week, two of the infected people returned from Melbourne and the third was their roommate.
In Sydney, authorities sought to locate 48 passengers who were cleared from Melbourne on an overnight flight without being checked for COVID-19 symptoms.
The resurgence of the virus and the imposition of new containment measures will make it more difficult for the government to get the economy back on its feet as it sinks into its first recession in three decades. Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said closing the border and locking Melbourne would cost the economy up to A $ 1 billion ($ 700 million) a week.
Border control
Prior to the lockdown, police checkpoints on the Victoria-New South Wales border caused delays of more than an hour for drivers, many of whom are daily commuters who live and work on either side. .
The only other internal border of Victoria with South Australia has been closed since mid-March.
Among the new COVID-19 cases in Melbourne on Wednesday, 75 occupants of nine social housing towers were locked last week, preventing their 3,000 residents from leaving for five days.
Across the country, Australia has reported approximately 9,000 cases of COVID-19 and 106 deaths from the virus.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
