Some restrictions could stay after lockdown ends

Surprise community cases could see Victoria’s five-day lockdown extended, while some restrictions are set to stick around.

Victoria has been plunged into a snap lockdown that could last longer than five days if a super-spreading hotel quarantine leak sparks surprise cases in the community.

Monday looms as the “crunch day”, government ministers warned on Friday night, and any mystery cases mean sweeping restrictions may have to be extended.

The Saturday Herald Sun can reveal tough rules on masks, gatherings and working from home are likely to continue even after the five-day shutdown, to reduce the risk of a third COVID wave.

With just 19 active COVID-19 cases, Premier Daniel Andrews imposed stay-at-home rules on the state, saying a “circuit-breaker” was needed to protect Victorians from the “hyper-infectious” UK variant.

The escalation, revealed by the Herald Sun on Friday, caused chaos as crowds were banned from the Australian Open tennis from midnight, weddings were cancelled and supermarkets were swamped.

States shut their borders to Victoria amid a nationwide contact tracing hunt triggered by a potentially infectious worker who did an eight-hour shift at Melbourne Airport’s Brunetti Cafe in a terminal visited by up to 5000 people.

Late Friday night the federal Health Department revealed a second Melbourne Airport worker had completed a shift while infectious.

The Victorian Health Department said it was not a new case and it had been publicly identified on Thursday.

The worker was a cleaner at the airport and Camberwell Grammar School, and was a primary close contact of a Holiday Inn case.

The department said CCTV from the airport was checked and the cleaner did not have any contact with passengers.

Toilet paper is in high demand. Picture: David Caird.

International flights to Victoria have been suspended, and the Premier is threatening to drastically reduce the number of overseas arrivals allowed into the problem-plagued quarantine program that also caused the state’s deadly second wave last year.

Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly on Friday night declared Greater Melbourne a coronavirus hotspot, citing concerns over the Brunetti case and the transmissibility of the UK variant.

From Saturday, all Victorians must wear masks in all public places and stay within 5km of their homes. Police are expected to be out in force to fine anyone flouting the rules.

Anti-lockdown protesters gathered in Melbourne’s CBD on Friday night to vent their fury at the state government.

Crowds will be barred from the Australian Open, although play will continue at Melbourne Park, because all public gatherings are banned until Thursday.

Frustrated tennis fans started filing out of the Djokovic-Fritz game at 11pm Friday ahead of stage-4 restrictions when the match was in its third set. Spectators booed when an announcement on the loudspeaker said they would need to leave the venue by 11.30pm.

From today, pubs, bars and restaurants can only serve takeaway meals and drinks, robbing them of the lucrative Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year trade this weekend.

And supermarkets imposed product limits on Friday as panic buying started in some areas, leading to violence at a Ballarat store.

Mr Andrews said the lockdown was needed because contact tracers did not have enough time to keep up with the spread of the UK variant, which escaped from the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel.

Costco Docklands shoppers buying toilet paper. Picture: David Caird.

It can move up to 80 per cent faster than the variants that ravaged Melbourne last year. “We must assume that there are further cases in the community … and that it is moving at a velocity that has not been seen anywhere in our country,” Mr Andrews said.

“If we wait for that to be proven correct, it will be too late and then we will face the prospect of being locked down until a vaccine is rolled out … to a significant percentage of the Victorian community, and that’s months.

“My advice is this will work. It is far too risky for us to assume that you could ever keep pace with this without shutting the place down.”

Mr Andrews and chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton said the five-day lockdown would not be extended as long as no further cases were among the more than 900 close contacts already being monitored.

Testing commander Jeroen Weimar urged Victorians to get tested, warning a low turnout would mean authorities “won’t have any confidence that we’re really getting to the bottom of this”.

A government minister told the Saturday Herald Sun: “The aim is five days, we will know Monday, if there’s cases beyond what is known or expected … At the moment everyone who’s got it you would expect, whereas if it goes beyond that you have got to look at things again.”

The same lockdown rules will apply to regional Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne, prompting criticism from some federal MPs.

The government has urged Victorians to get tested. Picture: Jason Edwards.

But Mr Andrews said it would be too difficult to implement the “ring of steel” in time to stop movement within the state.

Schools will only be open for vulnerable kids and children of essential workers from Monday to Wednesday, while childcare will continue as normal. All non-essential stores must close — a decision described by the Australian Retailers Association as a “devastating blow”. Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Paul Guerra said it was “Groundhog Day” for employers, who “should not keep paying the price for the shortcomings in Victoria’s hotel quarantine system”.

Mr Andrews said he was willing to lead “a cold, hard discussion” about the future of the quarantine program and questioned “whether it can be done at an acceptable risk level”.

While about 40,000 Australians are still scrambling to get home from overseas, the Premier said he was considering cutting back Victoria’s weekly intake from more than 1200 to just several hundred.

Victoria’s quarantine hotels were shut down for months in the wake of last year’s debacle, which was a major roadblock to more Australians coming home. The Premier’s comments frustrated senior federal government figures, given other states had successfully managed the risk of welcoming overseas arrivals.

“Your passport has to mean something,” one source said.

The Saturday Herald Sun can reveal as of February 9, there had been 90 cases of the UK variant identified in Australia, only five of which were outside quarantine hotels.

While other states successfully shut down potential outbreaks, Mr Andrews warned of problems tracing “the fastest-moving, most infectious strain of coronavirus we have seen”.

Quarantine workers will be among the first to receive a COVID-19 vaccine from later this month.

Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien said Victorians had “every right to be absolutely furious with the Andrews Labor government”.

“This government stuffed up hotel quarantine again, this government mismanaged contact tracing again and this government let the virus into our community again,” he said.