The Australian state of Victoria will lift COVID-19 restrictions in regional parts of the state from midnight on Thursday due to low CCP virus case numbers.
Meanwhile, metropolitan Melbourne and the single regional town of Shepparton are still managing serious outbreaks and will remain in lockdown.
From Friday, the five reasons to leave home will end in the regions, schools will reopen for Prep to Grade 2 and Year 12 students, and there will be no limit on the distance regional Victorians can travel from home for the eligible regions.
Most businesses and venues will also be able to reopen with capacity and density limits.
But Victorian Premier Dan Andrews warned Victorians that there remained a serious risk of the virus spreading.
“It can’t be. If it is, then we will simply see numbers spread and then we'll have to close large parts of regional Victoria down again, and perhaps even all of regional Victoria. We don’t want that,” he went on to say.
Police will also be out in force to ensure people from metropolitan Melbourne and Shepparton aren’t sneaking into regional Victoria, conducting on the spot checks. Fines for breaching the health orders can be as much as $5,452.
Despite Victoria’s targeted approach to easing restrictions, it is not clear whether other states will end regional Victoria’s hotspot status.
A Queensland Health spokesperson told The Epoch Times, “We regularly review restrictions and will ease or lift them as soon as it is safe to do so however the reality is outbreaks in southern states will not just disappear over the next few weeks.
“Our decisions consider a range of factors including a jurisdiction’s own restrictions; the movement of people in line with those restrictions; the impact of vaccination rates; what COVID-19 variant we are dealing with; what the testing numbers are; what the wastewater results indicate; and how the virus is spreading.”
Meanwhile, around 200 Victorian residents trapped on the New South Wales side of the border will be among the first to trial home-based quarantine. This forms part of the National Cabinet’s plan to reopen the country.
Any Victorians who have been residing in an NSW Local Government Border Area since at least Aug. 25, will be eligible to apply to return home via the new special exemption permit category: “Victorians in the cross-border community.”
Applicants also need to somehow show evidence with either receipts or QR code check-ins, that they’ve stayed within the border region and have had limited social contact while in NSW.
