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Victoria to enter five-day lockdown to contain Holiday Inn outbreak
By Rachael Dexter, Paul Sakkal and Annika Smethurst
Victoria will enter a five-day lockdown in response to the Holiday Inn quarantine outbreak amid fears the new strain of the virus could be spreading in the community.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the state would enter a lockdown at 11.59pm on Friday until 11.59pm on Wednesday.
“This hyper-infectious variant is moving at hyper-speed,” Mr Andrews said.
“This is a short, sharp blast – the same as we’ve seen in Queensland and Western Australia – that will give us what we need to get ahead of this faster moving virus. We will be able to smother this.”
The rules will be in line with the stage four restrictions in place last year, meaning there are only four reasons to leave the home: shopping, essential work, two hours of exercise and care and caregiving.
No visitors will be allowed into any private residence, and exercise and shopping will be limited to within 5 kilometres of home.
Schools will be closed from Monday except for vulnerable students or children of essential workers.
Gyms, pools, community centres, entertainment venues and libraries will close. The Australian Open tennis tournament will continue but without spectators.
Mr Andrews said five new cases were identified in the past 24 hours showing how “incredibly infectious this virus is”.
“Right now we are reaching close contacts well within the 48-hour benchmark. But the time between exposure, incubation, symptoms and testing positive is rapidly shortening. So much so, that even secondary close contacts are potentially infectious within that 48-hour window,” he said.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the alternative to lockdown was “potentially devastating”.
“It is significantly more infectious than any other virus that we’ve seen previously, and we’re seeing this play out in the cases that we’ve had in this cluster of cases in Victoria,” Mr Sutton said.
“As the Premier said, there are individuals who are becoming symptomatic, testing positive, who have already infected their close contacts.”
He said the virus was moving so fast that people were already infectious by the time they had been identified and told they were close contacts of previous confirmed cases.
“And that means that there are exposure sites where people have been with this super-infectious variant, and that becomes a danger for widespread transmission,” he said.
Regions locked down with no cases
Mr Andrews said the lockdown would apply to the whole state as there was no time to set up a repeat of last year’s “ring of steel” around metropolitan Melbourne.
“I don’t want this thing to go from Melbourne to regional Victoria. If we have rules that are softer, that are easier in regional Victoria, and barely enough time to set up a ring of steel – once you had it up, you’d almost be dismantling it at the same time,” he said.
“It’s five days, it’s not weeks. It’s not a long-term thing. Therefore, it’s appropriate to have the same rules apply across the whole state.
Mr Andrews said if the lockdown was any longer than five days the government would divide Melbourne from regional Victoria.
“My message to regional Victorians is we have no evidence of any cases, and that’s how we want to keep it,” he said. “I know it will be painful. But there is no option – this thing moves so fast.”
Mr Andrews said he hoped health authorities would be able to ring-fence the outbreak very fast, such as in the case of the Black Rock restaurant over Christmas.
No visitors to aged care
No visitors will be allowed in aged care facilities at all from midnight tonight in Victoria, while there will be very strict visitation limits for hospitals, Health Minister Martin Foley has announced.
“There will be no capacity to visit private residential aged care or state residential aged care, and restrictions will be placed in regards to capacity to visit public and private hospitals,” Mr Foley said.
“That is to make sure that our most vulnerable community members, those who are unwell, those who are aged and frail, can be protected through this short, sharp circuit breaker.
“No one is going to risk the sort of things that we saw in the private residential aged care sector in 2020.”
Mr Foley said the lockdown was to prevent a third wave of virus in Victoria.
“A third wave would be catastrophic, particularly for our vulnerable Victorians,” he said.
Victoria’s Department of Health confirmed the two new cases in a tweet at 11pm on Thursday night – stating that both were household primary contacts of previously announced cases.
Five cases in total were discovered on Thursday which were recorded in Friday’s official numbers. There are now 19 active cases in Victoria, with over 24,000 tests conducted on Thursday.
There are 905 primary close contacts linked to the Holiday Inn outbreak in Melbourne, according to COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar.
Brunetti cafe at Terminal 4 of Melbourne Airport was added to the state’s growing list of ‘Tier 1’ exposure sites just after midnight on Thursday. A newly confirmed positive case worked at the cafe for more than eight hours from 4.45am to 1.15pm on Tuesday, February 9 while potentially infectious.
Melbourne Airport confirmed 29 domestic flights arrived and departed Terminal 4 during that period and Mr Weimar made a plea for anyone who spent time in the T4 terminal at Melbourne Airport on Tuesday to come forward immediately.
“They worked from 4:45am on Tuesday the 9th and worked until about 1pm and we believe at that point they may well have been infectious, given she tested positive with a test taken on Wednesday, of which we got the result on Thursday,” he said.
“So, our call to action here is now that anybody who was at Terminal 4 between [4.45am] on Tuesday February 9 until 2pm, you must isolate. You must get tested. You must contact us. And stay isolated for 14 days.
“It’s critical that we run this to ground now, that we stop it here.”
Hotel quarantine changes flagged
Mr Andrews said he might move to stop hotel quarantine in Melbourne all together or limit overseas arrivals to compassionate cases.
“I’m making it clear to you that I’m looking at hotel quarantine and whether it can be done at an acceptable risk level. And I don’t think I’ll be alone in doing that,” he said.
“I think there needs to be a cold, hard discussion, and I’m happy to lead it if I have to, about whether, with this UK strain – and we haven’t even got on to South Africa yet, because it’s just as bad – should we be having the total number of people coming home? Or should it be a much smaller program that’s based on compassionate grounds?”
Mr Andrews said he would speak to the Prime Minister and national cabinet about his concerns before making any announcements.
PM calls for proportionate response
Speaking earlier, Prime Minister Scott Morrison would not confirm the Victorian government’s plan, but said a “proportionate response” to the outbreak should be able to get it under control.
“A proportionate response that enables those, the tracers and others, to be able to get on top of it and get the same successful result we have seen in other states,” he said.
The outbreak, which authorities believe may have begun by the use of a nebuliser inside the hotel, prompted several states to tighten their borders to travellers from Greater Melbourne.
Queensland Acting Premier Steven Miles said on Friday anyone travelling to Queensland who had been in the Greater Melbourne area in the previous 14 days would not be allowed into the state.
The border closure would apply from 1am on Saturday. The applicable hotspots would be the 36 local government areas of Greater Melbourne.
The Northern Territory declared Greater Melbourne a hotspot, meaning that anyone arriving from that area would have to enter quarantine at Howard Springs
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she had no intention of closing the border with Victoria.
“We think shutting borders and locking down community should be the last option, not the first option,” she told Seven’s Sunrise program.
“We are hopeful that the Victorian government and the health experts will get on top of this as soon as possible, and we don’t feel at this stage there is any need to close the border.
“We have seen the devastation caused last time that happened and as far as NSW is concerned … the only time we closed the border to any state was when Victoria had in excess of 150 daily cases.”