Victoria will once again move to another set of restrictions as the state eases out of lockdown.
From Friday in Melbourne, students will be allowed back at schools, hospitality venues can reopen to small numbers, and there will be no limits on the reasons to leave home.
But gyms remain closed, visitors are barred from the home, and a 10-kilometre radius for movement around the home will be lifted to 25 kilometres.
Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien said the new rules do not mark the end of lockdown, but rather, a "slightly longer leash". Business and tourism groups have also expressed disappointment about the continued hit to their operations.
Here's the reasoning behind some of the key restrictions.
There's a risk of social gatherings, especially at home
Melburnians will be able to gather outdoors in groups of up to 10, but visitors to the home will not be permitted unless it is an intimate partner or a member of a single bubble.
People in regional Victoria can now have two visitors to their home per day and gather in groups of 20 in public.
Indoor settings are known to be the most high-risk environment for the spread of COVID-19, and much of the transmission in Victoria has occurred within family homes.
"You have to look at the cumulative effect of what it means to allow two people, plus dependents ... across those hundreds of thousands of homes," Professor Sutton said.
Meanwhile, Melbourne restaurants, pubs, and cafes can reopen for seated service with a maximum of 100 people and 50 indoors. In regional Victoria, that's lifted to 150 people, with 75 indoors.
The Chief Health Officer said while it may look "out of accord" when comparing what Melburnians were allowed to do at home versus at a venue, the rules were about "what it means for millions and millions of person-to-person interactions".
ABC News: Ron Ekkel
)Ivo Mueller, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, said the idea of cumulative risk was to look at how restrictions would affect the entire population.
"[But] the risk for the entire state is not one household that we perceive, in the household that we're living in, it's all households in all of Victoria."
University of NSW epidemiologist and World Health Organization advisor Mary-Louise McLaws said other restrictions would be safer to lift before home visits, given the risk home gatherings posed.
That cumulative effect applies to all of the restrictions
Professor McLaws said there were "multiple factors that build up an increased risk of spread".
"So travelling more than 25 kilometres, the likelihood if one person travelled that far, and then they have a meeting with more than 10 people, and they don't wear a mask, the increased risk just exponentiates," she said.
"So they are trying to prevent that sort of escalation of risk."
ABC News: Simon Tucci, File photo
)Professor Mueller said the challenge for health officials was to weigh up the risk posed by the activity, how many people would participate, and then how many close contacts they were likely to have.
He said alongside those "basic principles", there were the economic and societal issues that meant a higher level of risk would sometimes be tolerated.
"Even during lockdown, we allow people to go to the supermarket and go shopping, because people do need to get their food," he said.
"... And there is a risk of transmission in a supermarket, if somebody goes there, but we accept that risk, because that risk is necessary and we need to accept [it] in order to have our society continue functioning."
Aerosol risks in gyms behind continued closure
Gyms will remain closed in Melbourne for at least another week, while they are reopening with restrictions in the rest of the state.
Roy Hanford, who runs The Fit Project in Brunswick, estimates his gym has lost more than $115,000 over the past 18 months.
He will be eligible for an additional $2,000 grant from the state government, but with equipment, rent, taxes, utilities and staff wages, he said it would "barely even touch the sides".
Professor Sutton said gyms were "high-risk environments".
"And international experience suggests that even when you've got high levels of testing, for some gyms where they test people before they come into the gym, the combination of indoor settings, closed environments, people exerting themselves, has really significant opportunity for spread."
Professor Sutton said 27 cases had been linked to a Victorian gym in 2020. But this was disputed by Fitness Australia, which said many transmissions linked to a boxing facility last year occurred outside of the venue.
The Chief Health Officer acknowledged gyms were "fastidious" about cleaning and following density rules.
"But it is that aerosol spread when you're exerting yourself that's very hard to mitigate," he said.
Professor Sutton said while he does not expect to see gyms stay closed for more than one week longer, they need to stay closed at this stage in the outbreak.
The way people celebrate weddings means numbers are different to funerals
In Melbourne, 10 people will be allowed at weddings, while funerals are permitted with 50 people.
Vanessa Cross runs events at the San Remo Ballroom and said the venue has had to move more than 10 events so far this lockdown.
Even though the ballroom will be able to open again from Friday, the current caps on weddings mean it isn't worth it.
"For us to open our doors and actually make it an event that we are even breaking even in, just doesn't work," she said.
ABC News
)Professor Sutton said international experience and outbreaks in Australia showed weddings could be a "significant source of transmission".
"There is close interaction at weddings, for human interaction reasons that are entirely understandable. But that constraint needs to be in place with those considerations in mind," he said.
He acknowledged the limit was hard on people planning weddings, or those who had cancelled multiple times, "but unlike a funeral, it can be deferred to another time, potentially".
"And that's not to say it's not hugely disruptive or expensive for people to have to change those plans, but we know that the close interaction and the way that you would want to celebrate a wedding makes it a not insignificant risk of transmission."
Professor Mueller said the fact it was not possible to postpone a funeral meant there was "a certain higher tolerance for risk" in those settings.
Radius criticised as 'simply a number', but authorities say it's to prevent spread
Opposition Leader Michael O'Brien wants the government to release the public health advice on why Melburnians are being limited to a 25-kilometre radius of their homes.
"The government can't explain this, they can't justify it with science, it's simply a number," he said.
Professor Sutton said it was the same principle that had underlined public health advice throughout the pandemic: that limiting movement helped reduce potential spread.
"If you have everybody moving without constraints, those exposure sites, the ability to transmit across the whole of metropolitan Melbourne increases," he said.
When asked if there were cases in the current outbreak which could have been prevented by restricting movement, he said: "The dilemma as I've often referred to in public health, we don't know what might have been prevented."
The radius rule being in place for the upcoming Queen's Birthday long weekend will provide an extra barrier to prevent Melburnians from travelling to regional Victoria while the different settings are in place.
The entire state is hopefully on track to return to the same level of restrictions at 11:59pm on Thursday, June 17, if case numbers stay low.
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2021-06-09 14:05:21Z
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