Australia lifts regional Victoria lockdown

Sydney, Australia, Aug 9 (EFE).- Australia announced on Monday the partial lifting of anti-Covid-19 restrictions placed last week on the state of Victoria.

While regional Victoria will come out of lockdown at midnight, its capital, Melbourne, which has been confined six times since the start of the pandemic, will remain in confinement until at least Aug. 12, the regional government reported.

On Monday, the health authorities reported 11 new infections, all of them in Melbourne, which has a population of around 5 million people.

Australia has enforced a strategy of short and localized lockdowns to combat the spread of Covid-19.

The outbreak, linked to the Delta variant, was first detected in mid-June in Sydney and has interrupted the pratically normal life in the country, whose international borders will remain closed until mid-2022.

New South Wales state capital Sydney and its surrounding communities remain in lockdown until at least Aug. 27, although the measures have failed to stop the spread of infections. The state recorded 283 local cases and one death Monday.

A week’s lockdown of the city of Tamworth will come into force at 5 pm Monday, similar to those applied in recent days to the population of Armidale and the Hunter region, north of Sydney.

In the state of Queensland, restrictions on Brisbane and a dozen jurisdictions ended Sunday, but the city of Cairns is currently in a three-day confinement.

Australia, which has accumulated more than 36,500 Covid-19 infections and 937 deaths since the start of the pandemic, has so far fully vaccinated 20 percent of the target population. EFE

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