Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has flagged that Melbourne’s draconian night curfew – one of the toughest lockdown measures in the world – could be lifted in coming weeks in the first phase of a staged relaxation of the Stage 4 restrictions.
But he cautioned the state risks “a third wave” of COVID cases if it relaxes restrictions too fast and too early.
Just 24 hours after it emerged that the number of Victorians going AWOL from self-isolation was far lower than previously thought when the curfew was announced, the Premier conceded that as soon as it was safe to do so the curfew will be lifted.
“If something like the curfew was deemed to be no longer necessary, then it will come off,’’ he said on Thursday.
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“It won’t be on there – it won’t be on, it won’t be imposed for any longer than it needs to be.
“That’s the rule we’ve tried to apply to all different restrictions we’ve put in place. It’s absolutely fine for us to be having these discussions, it is just hard to crystal ball where we might get to. Just so we’re clear, I wouldn’t want to set a date – it might be easier to do that for a little while – until that date couldn’t be delivered.”
But Mr Andrews stressed there was still “a long way to go in this.”
“We have numbers in the low 200s, the trend is good. We have to acknowledge that even at that number, even at that half number, if you opened up, you wouldn’t have defeated the second wave – you’d just be beginning the process of a third wave. I don’t think anyone wants that.”
The Victorian Premier declared the unprecedented COVID curfew on August 2, confirming that residents would be subjected to the overnight limits for six weeks and banned from travelling more than 5km to go shopping or to exercise.
The curfew is currently scheduled to remain in place until September 13. Between 8pm and 5am, people living in Melbourne cannot leave home unless for the purposes of work, medical care and care-giving.
Even if it is lifted early the ban on leaving the house other than for the four permitted reasons including attending work and one hour of daily exercise within 5 kilometres of the family home is likely to remain in place.
The fresh hope of an early relaxation of some the curfew came as Victoria’s active cases plummeted on Thursday to 4864 down from 7155 on Wednesday.
Deputy chief medical officer Professor Allen Cheng said many people infected with COVID were now being cleared.
“The eagle-eyed among you will notice that there’s been a sharp decrease in the number of active cases – 2,291 since yesterday,’’ he said.
“I’d probably just explain the process of how an active case is cleared – it’s a process we call “release from isolation”. For most people, it involves a case interview that’s a bit like the opposite of the case investigation that we do at the start. So it does take an assessment by a trained health professional.
“What it does involve is making sure that their symptoms have cleared and enough time has lapsed since the start of their illness to allow them to be released from isolation.”
Professor Cheng also suggested the current daily number of new COVID cases will need to fall substantially before Melbourne can move to Stage 3 restrictions.
“Look, that’s a discussion that we’re having over the next week or so. It would be substantially lower than it is now,” he said. “I won’t give you a figure, but single digits or even low double digits.
“But it does also depend on, you know, if there are mystery cases, then we would worry more about those. So it’s not going to be a single figure, and there are going to be a number of other places as well.
“In general, a mystery case means that there’s at least one other out there, so I would be happier not to have any of those.”
Melbourne University epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely said the “magic number” to move to Stage 3 restrictions depended on whether you wanted to go for suppression or elimination.
“At the moment we are tracking along quite nicely. If that was to continue perfectly mathematically, we would be into somewhere around the teens somewhere at the end of 6 weeks,’’ he said.
“But we’ve got sections of the communities where the virus is more hooked into certain communities.
“Think about your uber drivers, your bus drivers, healthcare workers it’s probably going to take longer in some of those communities to reduce cases.
“And there’s always the chance someone will be a superspreader and off it goes.”
Professor Blakely said if you were going for suppression rather than elimination, you could start cautiously moving towards relaxing the restrictions once the daily new cases tally got to around 40 cases.
“But if we decide as a community we are going to have a crack at elimination then you hold on longer,’’ he said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMipwFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS93b3JsZC9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy9hdXN0cmFsaWEvY29yb25hdmlydXMtdmljdG9yaWEtbWVsYm91cm5lcy1uaWdodGx5LWN1cmZldy1jb3VsZC1iZS1saWZ0ZWQtaW4td2Vla3MvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9iM2M0OWFjMTlkYjU2YjlkM2YzZWNhOGI1OTQ5OWNjNNIBpwFodHRwczovL2FtcC5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS93b3JsZC9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy9hdXN0cmFsaWEvY29yb25hdmlydXMtdmljdG9yaWEtbWVsYm91cm5lcy1uaWdodGx5LWN1cmZldy1jb3VsZC1iZS1saWZ0ZWQtaW4td2Vla3MvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9iM2M0OWFjMTlkYjU2YjlkM2YzZWNhOGI1OTQ5OWNjNA?oc=5
2020-08-20 09:09:44Z
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