Mandatory supervised quarantine for Melbourne residents who visit the Northern Territory could be in place for a year due to a new coronavirus outbreak in the nation’s second-most populous city.
The Territory government responded to the spike in Victoria by announcing on Sunday that arrivals from designated COVID-19 hot spots would be put into forced quarantine.
That was expanded on Monday to all of Melbourne.
Melbourne has been ordered back into lockdown for six weeks after Victoria was hit with a record 191 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, following an increase of 127 cases on Monday, which was also a record.
The NT borders were due to reopen on July 17 but Melburnians and residents from any other areas deemed to be coronavirus hot spots must now go into supervised quarantine for 14 days at their own cost and face testing.
Visitors to the NT from interstate currently must go into unsupervised self-quarantine.
NT Police have been increasingly issuing fines to people for breaching quarantine, with 121 penalties so far. Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance NT chief executive John Paterson called for the borders to be shut to all of Victoria immediately, rather than Melbourne from July 17, citing concerns over indigenous communities.
The NSW border will be closed to Victoria from Wednesday.
NT Health Minister Natasha Fyles said the situation was “rapidly evolving” which meant there was still plenty of time to make changes in the next 10 days if there were outbreaks in new areas.
The government made its decisions based on medical advice while recognising the restrictions had caused an economic crisis and could be in place long-term, she said.
“This could be in place for many months, it could be in place for up to a year,” she told reporters.
“In terms of people potentially planning travel, they should be aware that these their local government areas could be defined as a hot spot and therefore (would be) going into forced quarantine if they are planning any travel interstate post-July 17.
“This will allow some travel between Australian jurisdictions, we know that coronavirus has had a huge impact and people haven’t been able to visit loved ones who may be seriously ill and had impacts on people attending funerals.
“We need to make sure the measures we put in place stand us into the future ... we need to be practical, we’re going to be living with this for some time to come until a vaccine is rolled out.”
Last week a man in his 30s became the first positive case in Darwin in almost three months, after travelling from Pakistan to Melbourne where he completed quarantine but then stayed with relatives in one of the city’s infection hot spots.
