By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Victoria’s Covid lockdown will be extended for at least a further seven days.
The restrictions, which began on Friday 16 July, had been initially imposed for five days until midnight on 20 July.
The lockdown will stretch until at least 11.59pm on Tuesday 27 July.
At a press conference on 20 July, Premier Daniel Andrews said the trends were “good”, but “we need more time” to curtail the “fast” transmission of the Delta outbreak.
“We need more time to ensure what we’ve done is successful.”
To end the “hard, fast and early” lockdown while the outbreak was “smouldering” would lead to potentially months of further outbreaks and lockdowns, Mr Andrews said.
Within eight days, two cases had grown to 85, with about 18,000 primary close contacts and more than 250 exposure sites.
In the past 24 hours, there were 13 new community transmissions. Nine of them were quarantined during their entire infectious periods.
Mr Andrews said further business support would be announced on 21 July.
In some minor changes, some workplaces that operate solely outdoors have been added to the authorized work list, such as pet grooming mobile services and pamphlet deliveries.
Students with a disability that are unable to be home-schooled may now be exempt to learn on-site at schools.
Under the lockdown settings, there are five reasons to leave home – food and supplies, two hours’ exercise, care or caregiving, work and education that can’t be done at home, and getting vaccinated.
Shopping and exercise are restricted to within 5 kilometres of home.
Masks are mandatory indoors, except at home, and outdoors – unless there’s an exemption.
