MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, will ease its third lockdown on Wednesday and allow spectators to return to the Australian Open tennis tournament after a five-day absence.
The Rod Laver Arena will receive 7,477 spectators – about 50% of its capacity – for the last four days of the first Grand Slam event in 2021, the tournament organizers said.
Up to 30,000 tennis fans a day were admitted to three zones in the tournament venue, Melbourne Park, before Victoria closed statewide.
Victoria Prime Minister Daniel Andrews said earlier that health authorities would decide the numbers of tennis people.
“We end up with crowds in many different places,” Andrews said. “We end up with people who can move freely because this short and sharp circuit breaker has worked.”
Lockdown has been enforced in Victoria, with a population of 6.5 million, to prevent the virus from spreading from the state capital.
Most restrictions are lifted from 11:59 p.m. after no new infections have been detected in the past 24 hours, Andrews said.
Schools and companies are reopening.
But people will still be required to wear masks, and visitors to homes will be limited to five people until February 26, when the last of the 25 active COVID-19 cases in the state will no longer be contagious.
All cases have been traced to an airport hotel in Melbourne, where travelers are quarantined for 14 days upon arrival from abroad.
Companies complained that the lockdown, announced just hours before it took effect Friday, disrupted the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day.
All tennis spectators were evicted from Melbourne Park at 11.30pm so they had time to go home before the stay-home order took effect. Booed a lot when they left. The Australian Open has since continued without spectators.
Some business leaders described the latest lockdown as an overreaction.
“It is clear that testing and tracing were the keys to resolving this potential outbreak, not the lockdown disproportionate to risk,” said Tim Piper, head of state of the Australian Industry Group.
“We need to learn from this lock and adjust the responses to it,” added Piper.
Andrews would not guarantee that further lockdowns would not be announced shortly.
“I’m not willing to pretend to the Victorian community that this is over,” Andrews said.
Melbourne came out of a 111-day lockdown in October following another wave of infections peaking at 725 cases per day. It was largely due to lax infection control procedures in two Melbourne quarantine hotels.
At the time, the rest of Australia eased restrictions due to the low number of cases following an initial nationwide lockdown.
McGuirk contributed from Canberra, Australia.