You can sense the pride in what’s been achieved and after everything it’s taken to get here, we absolutely deserve to feel that way,” he tweeted. Mr Andrews posted on Twitter on Friday to usher in Victoria’s long awaited Freedom Day as the state leaves lockdown behind for good. On September 23 Melbourne officially broke the world record for most days in lockdown and will have spent 267 days in total under stay-at-home restrictions by October 22.Ī second wage of restrictions are set to ease in Victoria on November 5 when the 80 per cent double dose target is expected to be reached. Last week the state recorded its worst daily figure of 2,297 cases – and pandemic record for Victoria. Yet 11 weeks later Melbourne is only just exiting hard lockdown with cases soaring over the 2,000 mark on Friday and hospitalised cases at 784. “Nowhere is this more apparent than in our CBD which continues to haemorrhage and businesses are being pushed to the brink.When Mr Andrews plunged the state into lockdown on Augafter eight COVID-19 cases, he claimed he wanted to go “hard and early” to avoid an extended Sydney-style lockdown. “Repeated lockdowns have devastating impacts on the community including business and only serve to set our economic recovery back further,” Victoria’s head of the Property Council of Australia, Danni Hunter, said. Citymapper data shows that movement remains at just 26 per cent of pre-pandemic levels in the city.
The latest lockdown means that the state has been locked down most of the past two months with Melbourne’s CBD decimated and events including the AFL Grand Final now also in doubt.ĭemand for office space in Melbourne’s CBD has dropped sharply in the past six months with the vacancy rate dropping two percentage points to 10.4 per cent. But we also need to look over the hill about how we live with COVID-19 after that point, which will still mean cases and some deaths.” “The next four or five months we know that is what we face and it will be difficult for business to trade until we reach that 70 to 80 per cent vaccination rate. “We are only ever one outbreak from the next lockdown, so we need to learn to live with that and business needs to plan around that as best they can,” the CEO of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Paul Guerra, said. Once it spreads, you can never even hope to run alongside it, let alone get out in front of it and bring it back down to zero or a low number of cases, this thing moves so fast.” “There are no alternatives to lockdown,” Mr Andrews said. The decision for a seven-day lockdown from 8pm on Thursday, comes just a week after the end of the state’s last one and, with strict restrictions still in place, marks the third lockdown for the state in two months and fourth this year. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews speaks to the media outside Victoria Parliament in Melbourne, Thursday, August 5, 2021.
The hospitality sector labelled the move a “recurring nightmare” and warned many businesses would not survive another six months, despite Mr Andrews promising that “ significant” new business support would be announced on Friday.
The tally included five mystery cases and more than 10,000 close contacts were forced into isolation. Businesses are bracing for snap lockdowns to become the “ new normal” until Christmas, after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said there was “ no alternative” to a sixth closure, due to the state recording eight new local COVID-19 cases.
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