[ad_1]
Despite the fact that life is normalized in many parts of the country with the opening of schools, offices and bars, five million Melbourne residents will have to comply with the “stay home” instructions first introduced in March from Wednesday midnight. The Victorian state capital accounted for the majority of new COVID-19 cases registered in Australia in June.
The six-week quarantine will cause “great harm” to the economy and human well-being, state Prime Minister Daniel Andrews said in a statement Tuesday that residents will have to stay home, with some exceptions related to critical activities, studies, care medical or shopping.
“The virus is still wreaking havoc in many parts of the world,” he said. “It’s still lurking in the Melbourne metropolitan area.”
Among the measures introduced is the ban on leaving some 3,000 people in social housing, including for shopping, which recalls the strict controls imposed on Wuhan, the main virus outbreak in China, and which classifies Australia as one of the few democracies in the West. demanding that people do not leave their homes.
The drastic movement draws attention to the differences in attitudes towards mitigation in different parts of the world; Some US cities allow companies to resume their jobs and revitalize social activities, even if the number of infections registered in them per day is many times higher than in Melbourne.
By his example, Melbourne is becoming an instructive example of the history of other large service economy-oriented cities, such as London, which lag behind Australia and are engulfed in a pandemic cycle.
Such a move also highlights how fragile initial success is in fighting the virus. Two months ago, Prime Minister Scott Morrison enthusiastically revealed a three-stage plan to lift most restrictions nationwide by the end of July, a goal that has now collapsed and become futile.
The sad end of success stories in Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state and Australia’s economic engine, can be explained by hasty political decisions, poor implementation of plans, and examples of public unrest.
Like other states and territories, Victoria had instructed all citizens and permanent residents returning from abroad to observe fourteen days of quarantine in hotels rented by the government. But instead of sending the police to inspect the operation, as was the case in other parts of the country, the state has entrusted the task to security companies, without even bothering to organize tenders for the contract, according to local media. .
According to The Herald Sun, negligence occurred, including inappropriate personal protection practices that allow families to communicate and visit each other’s rooms. As the newspaper notes, there have even been cases where several security guards have had intimate relationships with quarantined guests.
According to the report, the virus spread among security guards who took the garment or shared lighters with each other. So they unknowingly spread the disease in their communities, in Melbourne’s poorer and multicultural suburbs, where the virus spread rapidly through large family gatherings because the rules of social isolation were not followed here.
Social security lobbyists also claim that the government has not adequately communicated public health councils to multicultural communities; for example, the brochures were not translated into all the languages used in the area.
“Openness is obviously a natural process to boast of successfully controlling the virus,” said Linfa Wang, director of new infectious disease programs at Duke-NUS School of Medicine in Singapore. “But the public and all citizens are prepared and trained to absorb the ‘new COVID-19 standards,'” he said.
Encouraged to act, Andrews ordered a judicial review of alleged hotel quarantine violations. And after approximately two weeks of double-digit infection in the city, he ordered the introduction of quarantine in twelve suburbs on the north and west suburbs of Melbourne.
But that was not enough. On Monday, the neighboring state of Victoria, New South Wales, announced the closure of their common border for the first time since the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic. In addition, residents of the state of Victoria cannot enter other parts of the country where the spread of the virus in society is largely halted.
On Tuesday, when the number of infections per day rose to new records, Andrews extended the quarantine throughout the metropolitan area.
Australia is considered one of the best countries in the world to control the spread of the virus. It has done this by closing international and state borders, quarantining returnees, introducing measures of social isolation, and announcing large-scale tests and a virus detection mechanism.
On Tuesday, the country registered just 8,755 infections and 106 deaths, the latter compared to statistics for the state of Maine, one of the least affected states in the U.S.
In Queensland, where two active cases were reported on Tuesday, residents can enjoy a glass of beer at the bar and watch live sports, with only minor restrictions on meetings, and the Northern Territory lifted almost all restrictions in June. after announcing only one active case, but still urging residents to keep their physical distance.
Meanwhile, Melbourne residents rushed to supermarkets on Wednesday to stock up on food and other goods. People who live in cities near the New South Wales border and who need to cross the border because they work in another state have had to wait in a long line for police to urgently check their printed permits.
Australian Treasury Secretary Josh Friedrichenberg wrote in a review article published on Wednesday that the outbreak in Victoria, which accounts for about a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), has already hurt the country’s economic recovery. The quarantine could have cost the country one billion Australian dollars ($ 695 million) per week, he said.
“All of this shows us how quickly the direction of the pandemic can change,” said Australia’s deputy chief health officer this week. – The situation in Melbourne, like thunder from a clear sky, and not only for the people of Melbourne, but also for the people of all Australia, who may have thought it was a thing of the past. That is not the case. “
[ad_2]
