Coronavirus: Border may reopen next week, says Daniel Andrews

Victoria’s NSW border closure could ease as early as next week, Premier Daniel Andrews said on Thursday.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in Melbourne on Thursday. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Victoria’s NSW border closure could ease as early as next week, Premier Daniel Andrews said on Thursday — just a week after the measure was imposed, leaving thousands of Victorians stranded on the wrong side of the Murray River.

As Victoria and NSW recorded no new locally acquired cases of coronavirus in the 24 hours to Thursday — with one case linked to the Avalon cluster expected in Friday’s NSW numbers — Mr Andrews offered some hope to those stuck across the border, contradicting Health Minister Martin Foley’s comments a day earlier that it was “unlikely the border will be removed before the end of January”.

Mr Andrews said 250 extra staff had been brought on board at the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday to process more than 4000 appli­cations for compassionate and medical exemptions from Victorians stranded in NSW. As of Thursday, just over 400 exemptions had been granted.

“I just want to say to every single Victorian who’s in NSW and can’t get home, the border is closed for the best of reasons and that’s to protect every single ­Victorian from a third wave (of coronavirus),” Mr Andrews said.

“It’s based on public health advice, and the border will be closed not one moment longer than it needs to be, but the public health advice remains that a permit system and an exemption system should be in place, not just for greater Sydney but for NSW.

“We will work through all those things, but I hope those settings can change, and can change fairly soon, maybe next week, maybe early the following week.

“As soon as they can change, then we will have people able to get a permit much more easily than applying for an exemption, because the circumstances have changed, and people will then be able to travel home.”

Victoria’s first “zero” case day since December 29 came after 32,767 tests were processed in the 24 hours to Thursday, and despite the revelation on Wednesday that a man in his 30s had tested positive for coronavirus after ­attending the Boxing Day sales at the Chadstone shopping centre and the second day of the cricket Test at the MCG.

There were 38 active cases of coronavirus in Victoria on Thursday, including 27 linked to the Black Rock cluster, and 10 cases among returned international travellers in hotel quarantine.

The case of the man in his 30s is yet to be directly linked to any other cases, although authorities confirmed on Thursday that like the Black Rock cluster, it had been genomically linked to Sydney’s northern beaches cluster.

Mr Andrews, who was due to be on leave until January 20, said he had cut short his summer leave to attend an emergency national cabinet meeting on Friday, at which state and federal leaders are expected to discuss issues including quarantining of inter­national arrivals and flight crews, following recent COVID-19 clusters in NSW and SA.

“I’m back to make sure that those things that we have led on become part of our national corona­virus response,” Mr ­Andrews said on Thursday.

“Whether it’s pre-flight testing, treating flight crew no different to treating returning travellers and assuming that they’ve all got this virus.”

Victoria overhauled its hotel quarantine program after quarantine breaches led to the state‘s second wave of coronavirus, causing the deaths of 800 people.

Mr Andrews said the introduction of safeguards such as ­regular testing of quarantine staff and their family members, and flight crews, were particularly integral in light of new, more contagious strains of coronavirus in the UK and South Africa.