South Australia moves to lockdown for 7 days as Victoria extends its lockdown for another week

Victoria’s 5-day lockdown will now last for at least for another seven days to July 27, joined by South Australia which is also going into lockdown for a week from 6pm tonight, July 20.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall announced a week-long lockdown on Tuesday morning.

The state has five cases linked to the current outbreak.

“We hate putting those restrictions in place but we believe we have just one chance one chance to get this right,” Premier Marshall said.

“We’ve moved very quickly, very decisively to stop the spread, every single day that you let this go, you put yourself in a more difficult situation to bring it back under control.”

Non-essential retail will close, along with indoor fitness and recreation, while public entertainment and club sports are banned, Personal care services have also been halted and a maximum of 10 people are allowed at a private event.

Schools will close from tomorrow.

There will be five reasons why people can leave their home in South Australia:

• Life care and compassion reasons such as taking care of a loved ones
• essential work.
• Purchase of essential goods, such as food for medical reasons, including vaccination and, and testing.
• Exercise but limited to people from the same household.

South Australia’s lockdown rules

Regrettably, there is no intimate partner exemption for the state’s latest lockdown.

Masks will now be required in enclosed public spaces such as shops, as well as on public transport.

From 20 July 2021 masks are required in enclosed public places where people are present with people from different households. This includes shared indoor public places (eg. shops), passenger transport services, health care services, high risk settings.
ℹ https://t.co/am1otOgmr4 pic.twitter.com/jmTZiAP3wc

— SA Health (@SAHealth) July 20, 2021

Victoria lockdown extended

“Locky 5″ has not suppressed Victoria’s outbreak to the levels hoped, with Premier Daniel Andrews announcing the five-day lockdown due to end tonight will extend for another week to 12 days in total as the state recorded 13 new cases overnight.

A new hard border closure with NSW will be in place for at least a fortnight. Sydney is a red zone and except for authorised workers and compassionate exemptions, no one from that region will be allowed to travel to Victoria from there.

Anyone who enters Victoria from NSW without an exemption will either be put on a return flight or placed in 14 days mandatory quarantine. Entering Victoria from a red zone without a permit could lead to a $5,452 fine.

Victoria’s chief health officer will continue to consider the status of the ACT, but the pause of Red Zone Permits also applies to there.

“We cannot put Victoria’s hard-earned gains at risk by letting this Delta variant run free. We want Victoria back open as soon as possible – and we’ll do everything in our power to get us there safely and quickly,” Daniel Andrews said.

The Premier said further details on business support will be announced tomorrow. The state has already made more than 90,000 automatic payments to support local businesses.

Andrews said there are chains of transmission that are not yet contained that tracers don’t know about.

“We have 85 total active cases, 13 new today. Nine of those 13 isolating 100% of their time. But we now have around 18,000 close contacts of those 82 cases,” he said.

“That shows you how challenging this is. It shows you that we have made good progress, but we still have a way to go and more time is required for us to be certain and to be confident that we have, in fact, extinguished this and can begin the process of opening up again.”

Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton said that a third of the state’s close contacts are now in regional Victoria.

“We have seen significant and stand-alone outbreaks in regional areas in Phillip Island, in Bacchus Marsh, Barwon Heads and as far away as Mildura,” he said.

“We have nine cases who’ve had their entire infectious period not in the community. That is a really strong sign. Of the four cases who have had infectious time in the community, the movements of three of those have been very substantially limited because of the effect of the lockdown.”

Reported yesterday: 13 new local cases and 2 new cases acquired overseas (currently in HQ).
– 17,083 vaccine doses were administered
– 49,454 test results were received
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl1hf3W#COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData pic.twitter.com/DnSowZAsAm

— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) July 19, 2021

Sydney cases fall

In good news for the outbreak that led to the outbreaks in Victoria and South Australia, Sydney recorded a drop in the number of new cases, to 78.

Of those figures, 21 people were in the community during their infectious period.

The woman is believed to be the mother of twin removalists police charged on the weekend for ignoring a NSW Health direction and continuing to travel through regional NSW after receiving positive COVID-19 tests while on the road.

NSW recorded 78 new locally acquired cases of #COVID19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night. pic.twitter.com/0koPf9eaMj

— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) July 20, 2021