Australia has put 5 million people in strict quarantine in Melbourne due to coronavirus outbreak

The Acting Prime Minister of the Australian state of Victoria, James Merlino, announced on Thursday the confinement for the next seven days of this region, the second most populous in the country, due to a new epidemic of coronavirus.

From this Friday, the state, where the city of Melbourne, which has five million inhabitants, is located, will have restrictions and mandatory segregation in effect, with only five justified reasons for leaving home, buying food and supplies, working, caring, exercising for two hours a day, and ‘get vaccinated, the Australian News portal reported.

More, Public meetings have been banned, restaurants can only offer home services, and classes will be face-to-face with a few exceptions, and citizens are required to wear a mask, among other things.

Victoria will dive into this lockdown due to the increase in cases due to an outbreak of the Indian variant, which has left 26 positive so far, 11 diagnosed on the last day, although the state has 34 active infections with the actual hour.

Merlino expressed concern about the speed at which the variant travels through Victoria and noted that authorities are watching “how contagious it is.”

The outbreak is linked to an early major leak from a hotel used for quarantine in the state of South Australia. COVID-19 has since spread to neighboring Victoria, and more than 100 places have been visited by those infected. On the last day, up to 40,000 tests were performed.

The situation has led some Australian states to have also closed their borders to residents of Melbourne, a city that has already suffered hard quarantines up to four times due to new outbreaks of the coronavirus.

Last year, Victoria experienced one of the tightest and longest shutdowns in the world to suppress a second wave of COVID-19 that killed more than 800 people in the state, accounting for 90% of all deaths in Australia since the start of the pandemic.

Rapid contact tracing, quick lockdowns and strict social distancing rules have helped Australia keep its COVID-19 count relatively low, with just over 30,000 cases and 910 deaths.

The outbreak and this lockdown comes as the government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison comes under increasing pressure to speed up the vaccination rate, a process that has so far resulted in the application of 3.7 million doses, while he hopes to complete the vaccination of the entire population by the end. of the year.

(with information from EP and Reuters)

KEEP READING: