Melbourne enters five-day lockdown over UK Covid strain — with fans to be barred from Australian Open

Crowds had already been limited to 50% of usual capacity for the Australian Open

Credit: Reuters

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Australia’s second-most populous city will enter a five-day snap coronavirus lockdown, authorities said on Friday, barring spectators from the Australian Open tennis tournament.

A fresh Covid-19 cluster linked to a quarantine hotel in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, reached 13 cases as of Thursday midnight as authorities rushed to quash the spread of the virus.

Premier Daniel Andrews of Victoria state, which includes Melbourne, said the lockdown was necessary to halt an outbreak of the "hyper-infectious" UK strain of Covid-19, which leaked from a quarantine hotel at the city airport.

Mr Andrews called it a "short, sharp circuit breaker" banning public gatherings, home auctions, weddings and religious gatherings.

"There will be no crowds" at sporting events in the state, Mr Andrews said. The tournament runs until Feb. 21. Crowds had already been limited to 50% of usual capacity for the Grand Slam event.

"We must assume that there are further cases in the community than we have positive results for, and that it is moving at a velocity that has not been seen anywhere in our country over the course of these last 12 months," Mr Andrews told reporters.

"These restrictions are all about making sure that we respond appropriately to the fastest-moving, most infectious strain of coronavirus that we have seen," he said.

"I am confident that this short, sharp circuit breaker will be effective. We will be able to smother this. We will be able to prevent it getting away from us."

Summary of what's changing from 11:59pm tonight: pic.twitter.com/NZ6UROJTbi

— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) February 12, 2021

The outbreak leaked from an airport hotel that was housing international travellers undergoing mandatory quarantine and has so far infected 13 people, including hotel staff and their families.

Overnight it emerged that one infected person had spent several hours at a cafe in an airport terminal, potentially infecting travellers heading to other parts of Australia.

Victoria endured one of the world’s strictest and longest lockdowns last year.

Two other Australian state capitals, Brisbane in the east and Perth in the west, recently underwent similar snap lockdowns in response to cases of the UK strain leaking from hotel quarantine.

In both instances, the outbreak was quickly contained.

Australia has been among the world’s most successful countries in containing the coronavirus, with some 900 deaths for a population of 25 million.

Ahead of the announcement, Prime Minister Scott Morrison offered his government’s full support for Victoria’s decisions on containing the outbreak.

"We have dealt with (outbreaks) in the last few weeks in Sydney and Brisbane and Perth, and so a proportionate response… enables tracers to be able to get on top of it and get the same successful result we have seen in other states," Morrison told reporters.