Melbourne to ease more COVID brakes as 80% vaccination rate draws closer

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A woman wearing a protective mask walks along a deserted city bridge during a lockdown as Victoria state seeks to curb the spread of a COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, July 16, 2021. REUTERS / Sandra Sanders // File Photo / File photo

MELBOURNE, October 24 (Reuters) – Melbourne, the world’s most closed city that emerged from its latest wave of COVID-19 restrictions on Friday, will see more restrictions eased next week when Victoria state hits a rate 80% complete immunization, officials said Sunday.

Home to around five million people, Melbourne has suffered 262 days, or nearly nine months, of stay-at-home restrictions during six closures since March 2020, longer than the continuing 234-day shutdown in Buenos Aires.

From Friday, when 80% of people in Victoria – of which Melbourne is the capital – are expected to be fully vaccinated, Melburnians will be free to travel statewide and masks will no longer be needed outside.

“There is a fundamental agreement that we made with the Victorian community, we asked you to get vaccinated, you did it in record time and in record numbers,” said Premier Daniel Andrews.

With a once-sprayed vaccine rollout at full speed, Australian officials no longer plan to rely on prolonged lockdowns to suppress the virus. Victoria recorded 1,935 new cases of coronavirus and 11 deaths on Sunday.

As the state moves towards a “vaccinated economy” in which only fully vaccinated people will be allowed to enter sites, a rate of 90% is expected around Nov. 24, Andrews said.

He added that he wanted to see more than 80,000 people at Melbourne cricket ground for Boxing Day test on December 26 between Australia and England.

“It’s our approach to try to achieve a life as close to normal as possible,” Andrews said.

Australians overwhelmingly support vaccinations, with research conducted by the Melbourne Institute at the University of Melbourne showing in October that only 6.9% of the population was unwilling to be vaccinated.

The state of New South Wales, whose capital Sydney spent 100 days in a lockdown that ended earlier this month, has recorded 296 new cases of COVID-19 and four deaths. Almost 85% of the state’s population have been fully immunized.

New Zealand, which is also learning to live with the virus through vaccinations, recorded 80 cases on Sunday, all in the North Island. On Saturday, he reported the first COVID-19 infection in nearly a year in the country’s South Island.

Reporting by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Kim Coghill

Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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