The Victorian border with New South Wales will be closed from Wednesday after the state recorded its largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.
Key points:
- The border closure will take effect from 11:59pm on Tuesday
- There will be a permit system in place for people who need to travel into NSW
- The Chief Health Officer says there are now a total of 53 cases connected to the public housing towers outbreak
Mr Andrews announced the closure at a press conference this morning where he said Victoria had recorded a further 127 new coronavirus cases and a man in his 90s had died in a Victorian hospital.
The man's death brings the state's coronavirus death toll to 21 and the national total to 105.
The Victorian Premier said the decision to close the border followed talks with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The three leaders agreed closing the border would be the "smart call" at this point in time, Mr Andrews said.
"That closure will be enforced on the New South Wales side, so as not to be a drain on resources that are very much focused on fighting the virus right now across our state," Mr Andrews said.
The closure will take effect from 11:59pm on Tuesday.
The decision follows a weekend that saw Victoria record 108 new cases on Saturday — the second highest increase in the state in a single day since the pandemic began — and lock down nine public housing estates in inner Melbourne in a bid to contain an outbreak of the virus.
Another 74 coronavirus cases were recorded in the state yesterday.
The Premier said of today's 127 new cases, 16 were detected in the public housing towers that have been locked down.
An additional 10 infections from earlier numbers have been linked to the towers, bringing the total in the outbreak to 53 cases.
"It's essentially a doubling of the numbers since yesterday," Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said.
Mr Andrews said the length of the lockdown could be reassessed.
"Once all residents are tested we'll have more options based on data, and hopefully that means we can have a different set of rules that are not quite so hard in terms of the hard lockdown that we have put in place," he said.
Mr Andrews said there would be a permit system for people who needed to cross the NSW border.
"There will be a facility for people who live on those border communities to be able to travel to and from for the purposes of work, the purposes of the essential health services they might need," he said.
However he said going on holidays would "not be an acceptable reason" to cross the border.
There are 31 Victorians with coronavirus in hospital, five of whom are in intensive care, Mr Andrews said.
Professor Sutton said a "significant number" of new cases were in postcodes next to to hotspot areas.
"There's significant spillover and so to use the bushfire analogy: there are literally spot fires adjacent to those restricted postcodes," he said.
"But people are absolutely being engaged in those areas so there's lots of doorknocking, there's lots of testing that's occurring and so we're picking up the cases in those adjacent postcodes, but they're not only in those restricted ones."
More to come.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiY2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA3LTA2L3ZpY3RvcmlhLW5zdy1ib3JkZXItdG8tY2xvc2Utb3Zlci1jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy1mZWFycy8xMjQyNDY4NtIBJ2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMjQyNDY4Ng?oc=5
2020-07-06 02:23:10Z
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