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The sixth lockdown in the Australian city of Melbourne will be extended. This was announced today by the authorities with reference to the still too high infection figures.
Actually, the tightened measures for the almost seven million inhabitants of Melbourne and the state of Victoria should have been lifted on Thursday after four weeks. That was no longer possible because the number of new infections had risen by 92 within a day, said the head of the Victorian government, Dan Andrews.
As a result, the nighttime curfew will remain in place, playgrounds will remain closed and sports opportunities will be limited. Andrews did not say how long the tightened measures would remain in place. “We still have too many cases,” he said. That’s why “those freedoms that we all desperately want back” can’t be returned yet, he said.
New high in New South Wales
Meanwhile, in the neighboring state of New South Wales, home to Australia’s largest city, Sydney, 1,218 new cases were reported within 24 hours. The number of new infections thus reached a new daily high nationwide. Nearly 19,000 cases have been counted since the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus was first detected in the state of eight million people in mid-June.
Australia had originally been able to largely contain the CoV pandemic for a long time by closing its borders, quickly imposing lockdowns on known cases and intensive contact tracing.
In recent months, however, the number of infections has increased due to the delta variant. The vaccination campaign, which started hesitantly at first, has since gained momentum.
— source: orf.at/picture:Image by Simon from Pixabay
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