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Health workers at Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong, north-west of Melbourne AAP/PA Images

Australia's Melbourne and surrounding Victoria ordered into five-day lockdown

The largely Covid-free country is trying to halt an outbreak of the Delta variant.

AUSTRALIA’S BID TO quash a fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak will see the country’s second city of Melbourne return to a “hard and fast” lockdown tonight.

State premier Dan Andrews said the city – and surrounding Victoria – will join Sydney in locking down, bringing the total number of Australians under stay-at-home orders to around 12 million.

The largely Covid-free country is trying to halt an outbreak of the Delta variant, which has grown to almost 1,000 cases nationwide in a month.

Andrews said he took the decision to return Melbourne to its fifth lockdown “with a heavy heart” but it was an “absolute necessity”.

“Nothing about this virus is fair,” he said, describing how just 18 cases in Victoria had spurred thousands of contacts who must now be traced and tested.

“You only get one chance to go hard and go fast,” he said.

“If you wait, if you hesitate, if you doubt, then you will always be looking back wishing you had done more earlier.”

The lockdown will begin shortly before midnight local time today and last five days.

Australia’s largest city, Sydney, is now in its fourth week of lockdown, after the virus spread from overseas aircraft workers to their local driver in mid-June.

Sydney authorities said today that the situation there had “stabilised” – with 65 new cases reported in the last 24 hours.

But the lockdown is set to continue for two more weeks to try and eliminate any community transmission.

Australia had been widely lauded for its early handling of the pandemic and successful “Covid zero” strategy.

But a painfully slow vaccine rollout has left just 10% of the population protected as much of the rest of the world gingerly reopens.

The lockdown rules are less stringent than some other cities have seen.

Sydney residents are allowed to leave home for exercise, essential shopping, work or health reasons, but schools are closed and people are encouraged to remain at home.

Since March 2020, Australia’s borders have been largely closed to all non-essential travel in or out.

From this month, the number of people allowed to enter the country was cut to 3,000 a week.

Before restrictions were introduced, around 250,000 visitors arrived every week.

© – AFP 2021

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    Mute great gael of Eire
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    Jun 16th 2020, 2:58 PM

    Why not get the ECB to print the money and give it to the Irish Govt to kick start the economy. Create new projects all over the country and the money should filter down to everyone in the economy. The reason the ECB tries not to print money is to prevent inflation. That’s the only reason. But we are in a crisis and we need money to get the economy going again. Central banks can do what ever they want

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    Mute David Corrigan
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    Jun 16th 2020, 2:38 PM

    A lot will depend on how well (if at all) the tourist industry bounces back when restrictions are fully lifted.
    I think a lot of other sectors will be ok as they were performing well before the crisis hit.

    33
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    Mute Martin Peter Rahill
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    Jun 16th 2020, 4:07 PM

    Clamping down on Tax Evasion rather than just increasing tax would be a fine chance. Nixers & other undeclared additional income cheat everyone. The “Welfare Cheats cheat us all” is a classist argument that cost a fortune to roll out – and gathered less money in enforcement actions than it cost.

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    Mute Michael Wall
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    Jun 16th 2020, 5:22 PM

    The ECB have already agreed to underwrite everything at 0%, no need for a recession. We can push money into the economy, build needed infrastructure all we need is a government and an Irish central bank with vision.

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    Mute Peter Hughes
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    Jun 16th 2020, 3:19 PM

    Sure we can blame the greens for it because somehow they buried us in corrupt debt for the last 20 years….knowing the moronic Irish voter down they will somehow come to this conclusion lol.

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    Mute Sean
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    Jun 16th 2020, 3:29 PM

    @Peter Hughes: well the green party last time they were in power introduced a regressive carbon tax which does nothing but punish people who have no choice to drive due to lack of rural public transport, can’t see them doing much better this time round

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    Mute Peter Hughes
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    Jun 16th 2020, 4:10 PM

    @Sean: Lol nothing to do with FFG and their stellar governance….we deserve them let’s face it.

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    Mute Mickomacko
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    Jun 17th 2020, 1:11 AM

    That building, it looks like there is still scaffolding around it

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    Mute Mickomacko
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    Jun 17th 2020, 1:11 AM

    That building, it looks like there is still scaffolding around it

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