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 Australia's second most populous state has endured four lockdowns
since the pandemic begun, the longest running for more than 100 days
late last year.
Under mounting pressure and with an election likely within a year,
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday announced a plan to pay up
to A$500 ($387) a week to people in lockdown.
Morrison said the payments would be given to people over the age of
17 who cannot work from home and who have less than A$10,000 in
liquid assets.
Australia introduced a wage subsidy scheme at the beginning of the
pandemic but it ended in March and the government resisted calls for
a temporary reintroduction of the measure.
Snap lockdowns, international and regional border curbs and tough
social distancing rules have largely helped Australia keep its
COVID-19 figures relatively low, at 30,130 cases and 910 deaths.
But Morrison is being criticised for a slow vaccine rollout and his
refusal to help state governments build COVID-19 quarantine centres,
instead of relying on hotel quarantine where some lax security has
let the virus spread.
Melbourne's latest outbreak has been traced to a traveller, returned
from overseas, who left hotel quarantine in the state of South
Australia after testing negative but later tested positive in
Melbourne.
Melbourne is now seven days into a hard lockdown, scheduled to run
until June 10, with authorities saying the highly contagious variant
of the virus, first detected in India, could spread out of control.
Though Victoria's daily cases have remained in the single digits for
a week, officials fear even minimal contact could help spread the
variant. The three cases came from record daily tests of more than
57,500 people, bringing the total number of infections in the
outbreak to 61.
The total was revised down from 63 as two cases were false
positives, the government said.
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 The lockdown rules in parts of
Victoria outside Melbourne will be eased from
Thursday night due to the absence of cases
there, although curbs on house gatherings will
remain and masks must be worn indoors anywhere
outside your home. Melbourne's
five million residents, however, will only be allowed to step
outside their homes for essential work, healthcare, grocery
shopping, exercise or to get a COVID-19 vaccination until the end of
next week.
"We do not do this because we want to, we do not do this because it
is a choice. We do this because we have to do," Victoria's acting
premier, James Merlino, told reporters.
New South Wales state, which shares a border with Victoria, is on
alert after an infected traveller from Melbourne visited some
tourist spots about two weeks ago, sending authorities rushing to
track contacts.
Nearly a dozen locations have been listed as hotspots.
Australia's vaccine rollout has been slow partly due to a lack of
urgency in the community as COVID-19 has been largely eliminated and
due to concern about rare instances of blood clots from the
AstraZeneca vaccine.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is only being given to people aged 50 and
over in Australia. The government reported on Thursday there were
eight new confirmed or probable cases involving serious blood clots
with a low blood platelet count, taking the total count to 41
confirmed or probable cases.
(Reporting by Renju Jose; Additional reporting by Colin Packham and
Sonali Paul; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)
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