Melbourne tightened its lockdown today ordering all non-essential shops to shut as Australia’s second city stepped up efforts to contain the resurgent coronavirus.
Hours after it emerged from its first night curfew, Victoria’s state premier Daniel Andrews announced that retail and some manufacturing and administrative businesses would have to close from Wednesday night as part of a new six-week lockdown expected to hit 250,000 jobs, while schools will switch to remote learning.
“As heartbreaking as it is to close down places of employment... that is what we have to do in order to stop the spread of this wildly infectious virus,” he told a news conference. “Otherwise we are not in for six weeks of restrictions, we’ll be in for a six-month stint.”
Production at meat processing plants will be cut by a third and workers while construction activities will also be scaled back. “This is a very tough day, and there are many more of those to come before we get to the other side of this,” Mr Andrews added.
Victoria declared a “state of disaster” yesterday due to a surge in community transmissions, with a curfew imposed on Melbourne residents between 8pm and 5am. The state reported 429 new cases today, down from 671 new infections yesterday, but 13 more deaths was the second highest daily toll.
In the United States, nearly 50,000 new cases and 478 deaths were reported today, bringing the total to more than 4.8 million including 158,000 fatalities. Earlier, one of the White House’s top medical advisers, Deborah Birx, warned the US was entering a new phase in its fight against the coronavirus.
“This epidemic right now is different and it’s more widespread, and it’s both rural and urban,” she said.
Poland’s health minister Lukasz Szumowski said police and health authorities would start checks in shops to see if people are following regulations to keep their mouths and noses covered.