The Victorian government faces increasing pressure this morning to lift Melbourne’s lockdown amid a string of low case numbers in the state and as the city enters day 11 of its fourth lockdown. All eyes will be on Monday’s numbers after officials in the state refused to budge on Sunday despite pressure from fed-up Victorians and business groups to end the lockdown early.
Victoria recorded four new positive local cases of Covid-19 on Sunday, including two in aged care, but the risks posed by the Delta variant are forcing officials to be cautious. Acting Victorian premier James Merlino said lockdown will likely run until midnight Thursday, citing the highly infectious Delta variant covid mutation, which has struck 10 Victorians already.
Mr. Merlino said the state lived in a “different environment” with the new variant compared to its lockdown last year. “There’s a reason why public health is so concerned about the Delta variant,” he said. “It is much more infection than what we were dealing with last year.” “The last thing we want to see is this variant of the virus getting out and becoming uncontrollable,” he said. “I want to get there as quickly as you do.”
Mr. Merlino said his “expectation” was by the end of lockdown on Thursday, “we’ll be in a position to have further easings of restrictions in regional Victoria and careful easing of restrictions in Melbourne.” He went on to say the decision would be based on public health advice. “We’ve just got to drive this thing to the ground.”
“We do not have the luxury of picking and choosing the public health advice we receive a stop in. I hate going into lockdown; I like t to be out of lockdown as quickly as possible. The like every Victorian way to do that is for people to get tested, for people if you are eligible to get your vaccination, for people to follow the rules.”
But the financial pressure is increasing daily for both businesses and residents. A survey by Tenants Victoria showed 66 percent of respondents said the lockdown financially impacted them. An estimated average loss was $817. Deputy chief health officer Allen Cheng said lifting the lockdown was a “dday-by-dayproposition” but added that Thursday’s planned easing of restrictions was “our expectation”.
“If we can, we will,” he said of it potentially lifting early. Mr. Cheng said health authorities are scrutinizing cases and working with other labs to see if any further information can be obtained from specimens regarding the state’s hunt for the delta variant outbreak.
Chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, Innes Willox, has called for the Victorian government to devise a direct path out of lockdown to save the state’s businesses. “This lockdown has been marked by exaggerated language and doomsday prophesies from Victoria’s health leaders that have not come to pass,” he said.
Currently, he says it’s costing the economy nearly $360 million. On Insiders on Sunday, Waleed Aly backed the idea of lockdown, saying there was “no option”. “I don’t ree how you can mount the argument [lockdown] shouldn’t have been extended unless you want tto change [Australia’s] whole approach to COVID fundamentally.
“You still had mystery cases … we now know it’s not a mystery case but a mystery cluster so that just demonstrates that the decision they made, which was based on the level of uncertainty they had about what was going on, was vindicated because the mystery came into its own”.
Last week, Professor MacIntyre told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas the variant spreading in Melbourne is “more transmissible” and “more contagious” and that it has a particular mutation that’s “more likely to make it more vaccine resistant than that strain, so that’s a big concern”.
“There’s more virus in the air; we know that SARS Covid-2 is airborne, so an area where someone has been indoors might be more at risk with this particular virus. “The most considerable trouble is breathing in the virus through contaminated air indoors, in spoorly ventilated settings
“The stakes have been raised with this variant because we know it’s more transmissible.” “The pandemic is worse today than a year ago, and new variants are emerging regularly. They are particularly more transmissible and resistant to our available vaccines, to different degrees, so the stakes are much higher.” — with Isabella Fowler.
