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The Australian state of Victoria, the epicenter of the second wave of covid-19 in Australia, announced on Monday the lifting of the closure from Tuesday, after not having registered new cases in the last 24 hours.
Shops, restaurants and cafes in Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria and the country’s second-most populous city, will reopen at midnight Tuesday and residents will be able to move in again, local officials announced today.
“We can say that now is the time to open up,” said Victoria Andrews, head of government, visibly moved, at a news conference in Melbourne, recalling that the last time the state had zero infections was on June 9.
The detention was enacted in July, when the number of new cases was about 190 a day, a number that rose to 700 in August.
Andrews explained that the nearly five million residents could go out for any reason starting at midnight on Tuesday.
However, the limit to travel within a radius of 25 kilometers, as well as the prohibition to leave the city, will remain until November 8, according to the same source.
Despite the effectiveness of measures to contain the first wave of the disease caused by the new coronavirus, Melbourne suffered an outbreak of cases in the summer, mainly due to negligence in hotels where people returning from abroad were complying with the mandatory quarantine.
Melbourne’s five million residents were subject to severe restrictions, including a nightly curfew that was lifted in late September after nearly two months.
Residents were forced to stay home and could only travel within a five kilometer radius.
Some restrictions were lifted last week, allowing residents to play golf or cut their hair.
Australia, with a population of 25 million, has had approximately 27,500 cases since the start of the pandemic and 905 deaths from Covid-19.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 1.1 million deaths and almost 42.7 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
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