Melbourne’s Covid Cluster Sparks Restrictions on Gatherings

(Bloomberg) --

Gathering restrictions are being imposed in Melbourne as authorities race to clamp down a small cluster of Covid-19 cases in Australia’s second-most-populous city that’s grown to at least nine cases.

Private gatherings in homes will be limited to five visitors per day from 6 p.m. Melbourne time on Tuesday, while public gatherings will be restricted to 30 people, Acting Premier James Merlino told reporters in Melbourne. Masks will be mandatory when indoors in public spaces for people aged 12 and older, including in workplaces.

The cluster comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government is under increasing pressure to speed up the pace of the vaccine rollout, with about 3.6 million people in the nation of 26 million so far receiving their first jab.

The government initially expected inoculations to be largely complete by October, though the rollout has been pushed into 2022 because of medical complications tied to the AstraZeneca Plc jab, which has also deterred some Australians from receiving a vaccination.

Australia May Not Open Border Until Late 2022, Minister Says

Australia has been largely successful in controlling the virus through rigorous testing and contact tracing and by closing its international border to non-residents -- other than a new travel bubble with New Zealand.

But while day-to-day life for Australians has largely returned to normal this year, cases have sometimes leaked into the community from hotels where returned overseas travelers have been quarantining, triggering localized lockdowns.

Melbourne, a city of about 5 million people, endured one of the world’s longest and most stringent lockdowns last year. Its new cluster comes as Taiwan, once one of the global success stories in containing the virus, tackles its own outbreak that’s affecting hundreds of people a day and sent its government racing to secure more vaccines.

With Australia entering winter, Melbourne’s latest cluster “reinforces that the freedoms we have right now in Victoria and in Australia are built on precarious foundations, and things could change at any time,” Hassan Vally, a professor in epidemiology at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, said in an emailed statement. “We can look internationally for examples of what we want to avoid -- instances where complacency crept in and the virus took advantage.”

On Monday, four cases were detected in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, all close family members spread across two households. Authorities said on Tuesday they had identified five more cases of community transmission, all members of the same family.

Genome sequencing has confirmed the cases are from the variant that was first detected in India, and are linked to a leak from a hotel used for quarantine in South Australia state earlier this month, Merlino said.

In response to the new cluster, New Zealand on Tuesday announced it would pause travel with Victoria for at least 72 hours.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.