Melbourne lockdown, to have run till today, extended for second week
SYDNEY: Victoria yesterday extended a snap coronavirus lockdown in its state capital of Melbourne for a second week as it scrambles to rein in the highly contagious Kappa variant but will ease some curbs elsewhere.
Last Thursday's lockdown in Australia's second-most populous state was to have run until today, following the detection of the first locally acquired cases in three months, but infections rose and the number of close contacts reached several thousand.
"If we let this thing run its course, it will explode," the state's Acting Premier James Merlino said. "This variant... will become uncontrollable and people will die."
"No one... wants to repeat last winter," he added, referring to one of the world's strictest and longest lockdowns that the south-eastern state imposed last year to leash a second wave of infections.
More than 800 people died in that outbreak, accounting for about 90 per cent of Australia's total deaths since the pandemic began.
Six new locally acquired cases were reported yesterday, versus nine a day earlier, taking to 60 the tally of infections in the latest outbreak.
The health authorities have said the Kappa variant could take just one day to pass from person to person, versus the five or six days of contact required for transmission of earlier variants. - REUTERS
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