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SYDNEY: The Australian city of Perth (pix) began a five-day snap shutdown after a security guard at a quarantined hotel tested positive for Covid-19, authorities announced yesterday.
About two million city residents must stay home as of Sunday night, as do those living in nearby Peel and Southwest regions.
The scheduled return from schools today will be delayed, and locals will only be allowed to leave their homes for exercise, medical care, essential jobs or to buy food.
The new rules follow the first case of community transmission in the state of Western Australia for 10 months, authorities said.
“Our model is to deal with it very, very quickly and harshly … so that we can control it and not have the virus spread in the community as has been seen in other countries around the world,” said State Prime Minister Mark McGowan. .
Authorities believe the man contracted the virus from a returning traveler who was quarantined at a hotel in Australia’s fourth-largest city.
The traveler is believed to have contracted a variant of the virus from the UK that is believed to be more infectious than previously detected Covid-19 strains in Australia.
Genomic tests are underway to determine the precise source of the man’s infection, and health officials said he may have visited more than a dozen locations while carrying the virus.
Cafes, bars and restaurants were ordered to close, while visits to health centers are banned and weddings canceled.
“What we are trying to do is have a (short) break period rather than a long break period and therefore some adverse health outcomes,” McGowan said.
“We are trying to get rid of the virus as quickly as possible.”
The restrictions are the harshest Perth has seen since the early stages of the pandemic, while masks have become mandatory for the first time.
Western Australia kept its borders closed for most of 2020, isolating itself from the rest of the nation, but allowing the state to enjoy many months of relative normalcy.
The lockdown comes three weeks after similar measures were implemented in the eastern city of Brisbane, prompted by a hotel cleaner who hired the variant.
Those restrictions were quickly lifted when it became clear that the virus had not taken hold in the community.
Australia has done relatively well during the pandemic, recording just over 28,800 Covid-19 cases and 909 virus-related deaths in a population of roughly 25 million. – AFP
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