SYDNEY/MELBOURNE • Australia will halve the number of citizens allowed to return home from overseas each week, as the authorities struggle to contain a Covid-19 outbreak in the country's second most populous city.
Since March, Australia has allowed entry to only citizens and permanent residents. Once they enter the country, they must go into a mandatory 14-day quarantine in hotels, which is paid for by state governments.
Starting Monday, Australia will impose a cap of 4,175 people allowed to return each week and those returning will also have to pay for the mandatory quarantine in hotels.
"The decision that we took... was to ensure that we could put our focus on the resources needed to do the testing and tracing and not have to have resources diverted to other tasks," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra after a meeting of the national Cabinet yesterday.
New Zealand enacted measures earlier this week to limit the number of citizens returning home to reduce the burden on its overflowing quarantine facilities.
The flare-up in the city of Melbourne has forced five million Australians to stay home for all but essential business, led the rest of Australia's states to ban Victorians from entering, and dealt a blow to the country's economic recovery.
It has also slowed the planned opening of a quarantine-free "travel bubble" with New Zealand, which Mr Morrison said he would be discussing with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern later yesterday.
The announcement of new travel restrictions comes days after Victoria reimposed lockdowns in the state capital, Melbourne.
The lockdown will last for six weeks following a surge in cases linked to social distancing breaches in hotels where returned travellers were held in quarantine.
Yesterday, Victoria reported a single-day jump of 288 new cases. That marked a record for the state and took its active cases to 1,172, which make up most of the active cases in the country.
"This is a challenging day. It may get worse before it gets better," state Premier Daniel Andrews said.
The state's chief health officer warned there would be a sharp rise in hospitalisations, intensive care cases and deaths in the coming days as a result of the spike in cases.
In an effort to control the outbreak, Victoria also became the first state in the country to urge people to wear masks.
To ease the pain for businesses in Melbourne forced to shut again and holiday spots hit by cancellations, the Victorian government yesterday said it would provide a further A$534 million (S$517 million), on top of A$6 billion already provided.
"This is us saying: 'We're here with you all the way through what will be a very traumatic, a very distressing and a very difficult time for all Victorians'," state Treasurer Tim Pallas said.
The state, which makes up about a quarter of Australia's economy, expects unemployment to peak at 11 per cent, up from 6.9 per cent now.
The Victorian economy is expected to shrink by 14 per cent and take two to three years to recover, Mr Pallas said.
Despite surging numbers of cases in Victoria, the state has relaxed restrictions on most of the 3,000 people who were locked down in nine public housing towers. One of the nine towers will remain in a hard lockdown for another eight days.
While the situation worsened in Melbourne, Queensland state opened its domestic borders yesterday to people from everywhere but Victoria for the first time in more than three months.
The state is the country's premier vacation destination during the southern winter, and tourists usually flock to take advantage of its beaches, tropical forests and the Great Barrier Reef.
Even with the latest outbreak, Australia has done quite well in controlling the coronavirus so far, with around 9,000 cases and 106 deaths.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
