Melbourne to lift lockdown as Delta outbreak contained

Pedestrians walk the quiet streets of Melbourne.

Melbourne, Australia:

The Melbourne coronavirus lockdown will be lifted on Tuesday evening, as authorities reported that an outbreak of the Delta variant in Australia’s second-largest city has been contained.

The neighboring state of South Australia will also relax stay-at-home rules, but the country’s largest city, Sydney, was likely facing a likely extension of a lockdown now in its fifth week.

After nearly two weeks on stay-at-home orders, millions of people in Melbourne and surrounding Victoria state will emerge from their fifth lockdown just before midnight on Tuesday.

The state had now “seen two outbreaks of Delta” in recent months, Prime Minister Dan Andrews said.

“It is not over, however, and we must be vigilant against this virus, the Delta strain, in the days, weeks and months to come until we can vaccinate as many people as possible,” he said. he added.

“It’s in a while.”

Schools, restaurants and shops will reopen but restrictions, including mask wearing, will remain.

For at least two weeks, people cannot invite visitors to their homes and the number of outdoor gatherings will be limited.

Victoria detected 10 new cases on Monday, all in quarantine while infectious.

In Sydney, authorities announced 172 new cases linked to an outbreak that began in June when a local driver contracted the virus from an international flight crew.

Australia has been praised for its early pandemic success, after closing its international borders and moving quickly to crush clusters of Covid-19.

But with a largely unvaccinated population, it has struggled to respond to the highly contagious Delta variant, repeatedly sending cities into lockdown.

About 13% of Australians have been vaccinated, with low amounts of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and skepticism about the AstraZeneca jab.

The country has recorded more than 33,000 infections and 920 deaths linked to Covid in a population of 25 million.

(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)