Restaurants, cafés and pubs across Victoria will be restricted to takeaway only as the state enters a seven-day “circuit-breaker” lockdown from 11:59pm, 27 May.
Hotels, clubs, TABs and the casino will close, as will entertainment venues, swimming pools and art galleries. Childcare facilities will remain open, but schools will remove to remote learning, except for vulnerable children and children of authorised workers. Higher education will move to remote learning only.
Victorians will have five reasons to leave their homes: to shop for essential goods and services, to provide care, for authorised work and education, for two hours of exercise per day, and to receive their COVID-19 vaccine.
The five-kilometre radius rule returns, though exemptions apply if the nearest shops are more than five kilometres away.
Masks will be mandatory in indoor settings outside the home. No visitors, except intimate partners, will be permitted in private homes, but people living alone can form a “bubble” with one other person. No public gatherings are permitted.
The restrictions are expected to last until 11.59pm on 3 June.
The news comes after Victoria recorded 12 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 overnight, bringing the current outbreak to 26 cases.
The list of exposure sites includes restaurants and cafés across Melbourne, Bendigo and the Mornington Peninsula.
In a press conference this morning, Acting Premier James Merlino stressed the need for authorities to move quickly to suppress the current outbreak.
“If we make the wrong choice now, if we wait too long, this thing will get away from us,” he said. “With 10,000 primary and secondary contacts, with more than 150 exposure sites right around the state of Vitoria, we need to act now. That is the clear expert advice from our public health team.”
This is the third statewide lockdown for Victorian residents, and the fourth for residents of metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire.
The state last entered a five-day lockdown under stage 4 restrictions in February.
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