This time, a targeted lockdown will be even tighter than before
“the very worst thing” to have to impose a second lockdown, warned Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, when he started easing the state’s restrictions in May. On July 8th he was forced to do just that to 5m residents of Melbourne, the state’s capital, plus a district to its north, where a second wave of covid-19 has been rolling in. Active cases almost tripled in the first nine days of the month, to more than 930.
Blame has been levelled at poorly trained private security guards who were supposed to keep travellers in their rooms. They had not been using protective gear properly and have been accused of breaching social-distancing rules by sharing cigarettes and car-pooling to work. Local papers report that some had sex with the people they were supposed to be keeping in strict isolation.
The state government has launched an investigation into what went wrong in its quarantine hotels. A testing blitz is now under way. Nationwide, infections are well below their peak in March, but in some ways this spike looks more threatening. Most of Australia’s early cases came from travellers who were intercepted on arrival from abroad. This time the virus has moved through the community, making carriers harder to identify.
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