Melbourne Put Back on Stage 3 Lockdown as COVID Cases Rise

Image by William WEST/ AFP

A six-week, stage 3 lockdown will be strengthened throughout urban Melbourne from Wednesday night, prohibiting homeowners from leaving their houses unless it’s for necessary reasons such as work, research study, exercise, shopping for food and other necessities, or to supply and receive care.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the tightening of restrictions on Tuesday afternoon following a record spike in COVID-19 cases for the state.

In a public address, Premier Andrews stressed the importance of the restored lockdown steps, alerting that “thousands” of individuals would die if the coronavirus break out continued to spiral out of control.

” I’m very sorry that we find ourselves in this position. I would, with the best of regard, put it to you getting this infection and passing away from it is really difficult too,” he said. “Let’s not see it as just a trouble. It’s a lot more than that. It’s a pandemic. And it will kill thousands of individuals if it gets entirely far from us.

” That will be more than bothersome.

Those areas under lockdown will likewise undergo rigorous limits on gatherings: forbiding check outs to other people’s houses unless it’s an intimate partner, and limiting public gatherings to no greater than 2 individuals (or a family group). Funeral services will be restricted to no greater than 10 individuals.

Coffee shops, restaurants, pubs, clubs and bars in impacted areas will likewise require to revert to takeaway only, while retail outlets, markets and hair stylists are enabled to stay open, based on particular conditions.

Metropolitan Melbourne, likewise referred to as Greater Melbourne, includes the following 31 towns: Banyule, Bayside, Boroondara, Brimbank, Cardinia, Casey, Darebin, Frankston, Glen Eira, Greater Dandenong, Hobsons Bay, Hume, Kingston, Knox, Manningham, Maribyrnong, Maroondah, Melbourne, Melton, Monash, Moonee Valley, Moreland, Mornington Peninsula, Nillumbik, Port Phillip, Stonnington, Whitehorse, Whittlesea, Wyndham, Yarra and Yarra Ranges.

The Mitchell shire, about 100 kilometres north of the Melbourne CBD, is likewise covered by the lockdown.

Statement of the significant stage 3 restrictions comes simply days after the Victorian Federal government quickly and controversially imposed a “hard lockdown” on 9 public housing towers in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, forbiding the 3,000 homeowners of the tower blocks from leaving their homes for any factor.

The rollout of the steps over the weekend, which saw some 500 cops released to the towers in the middle of concerns of a break out among the homeowners, was greatly criticised by members of the general public for the presumably callous and heavy-handed method which it was implemented.

Premier Andrews dealt with those concerns in his address on Tuesday afternoon.

” Can I send out a very clear message to every Victorian who is concerned for those homeowners: all of us are,” he said.

” The technique here is to finish the screening [of all residents at the public housing towers] and then as soon as possible, as soon as that screening is total, to have those nine towers eliminated to the same footing that the rest of Melbourne will relocate to … A stay-at-home with four reasons for leaving.

” This is not going to last a moment longer than it requires to, to keep those citizens safe and to have what I understand are really, extremely challenging steps. However they are in proportion to the danger when you think about, as we’ve stated many times, the truth that many individuals in those nine towers are amongst some of the most vulnerable individuals in our Victorian neighborhood.”