SYDNEY – Australia’s second-most populous city will be shut down from the coronavirus for five days soon, authorities said Friday, banning spectators from much of the Australian Open tennis tournament.
A new Covid-19 cluster linked to a quarantine hotel in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria, reached 13 cases as of midnight on Thursday, as authorities rushed to stop the spread of the virus. All of these infections were related to the highly contagious British variety.
Victoria Prime Minister Daniel Andrews announced the state shutdown, which began at midnight Friday, calling it a “short, sharp circuit breaker” banning public gatherings, home auctions, weddings and religious gatherings.
“We have to assume there are more cases in the community than we have positive results for, and it is moving at a rate not seen anywhere in our country for the past 12 months,” Andrews told reporters, given the high transmission speed of the British variant.
When asked about the Australian Open, which will run through February 21, the prime minister said the Grand Slam tournament, one of the biggest events on the country’s sports calendar, was considered a workplace subject to lockdown restrictions.
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“There are no fans. There are no crowds. These people are essentially in their workplace,” he said. “The minimum number of personnel to keep it operating safely – not just because of the virus, but for other reasons too – will be in place.”
Already limited to 50 percent of normal capacity, the event was hampered by previous complaints from some international players, who were forced to quarantine critical prep time.
The tournament will run without crowds for the next five days without fans being allowed into the match venues, the organizers said. Spectators will be able to attend the matches scheduled for Friday, while those who purchased tickets for limited events will receive a refund, they said in a statement.
Victoria has suspended international passenger flights from Saturday until further notice, with the exception of flights already underway.
“We will continue to assess the impact of the UK strain of the virus on our program and international arrivals, and will provide more information on the duration of this pause shortly,” the state government said in a statement.
All states and territories except New South Wales – to which Sydney belongs and is the most populous state in the country – closed their borders to Victoria on Friday due to the high risk of transmission.
New South Wales, which registered a 26th day with no community affairs on Friday, said its borders with Victoria will remain open as it monitors the situation.
Victoria endured one of the world’s harshest and longest lockdowns last year after an outbreak that killed more than 800 people in the state, the vast majority of the national death toll.
The head of the Australian business lobby group expressed his frustration at the new closure, calling it “a bitter disappointment to the entire community”.
“This is the second blockage caused by Victoria’s hotel quarantine system, it should not be as long and destructive as the previous one,” said Jennifer Westacott, Chief Executive of the Business Council. “We have to keep the hotel quarantine working properly.”
More broadly, Australia is one of the most successful countries in the world in tackling the pandemic, in large part because of decisive lockdowns and sealed borders for almost all travelers except a trickle of travelers. The country has registered approximately 22,200 community cases and 909 deaths.
But the quarantine hotels, where all international arrivals must spend two weeks, have been a weak link in the defense, with the latest cluster in Melbourne providing another example.
Prime Minister Andrews proposed tightening up the repatriation program of Australian citizens for purely compassionate reasons, a move that could gain some support from other states that have had British pressure.
Ahead of the lockdown’s announcement, Prime Minister Scott Morrison offered his government full support for Victoria’s decisions to contain the outbreak.