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| COVID-19 cases in Australia (source: The Age) |
Slowly but surely Victoria is getting on top of its second wave and is now on the road to reopening the state. The roadmap was released a few weeks ago and we are already a bit ahead of schedule. While regional Victoria has nearly no cases and reopened to the Third Step on 16 September, metropolitan Melbourne is basically still in lockdown. The First Step on 13 September allowed for singles to form a social bubble with a person from another household, people to be outside for two hours a day, and moved curfew to start one hour later at 9pm.
On 27 September since metro Melbourne surpassed the 14 day average of between 30-50 new cases per day, we were able to move to the Second Step. This meant the curfew was removed and allowed for the reopening of childcare and return to schooling for most year levels in Term 4, an increase in permitted workers for certain industries, and up to five people from two households to meet in public during the two hours outside a day. These restrictions will be in place until at least 19 October, where the Third Step can be triggered if we have a 14 day average of under five new cases a day.
As of today there have been 27,078 cases and 886 deaths due to COVID-19 in Australia. Victoria's daily cases have averaged in the low teens for the past few days, with 365 active confirmed cases. The biggest story of the past few weeks has been Victoria's COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry, where various department secretaries, Ministers and the Premier testified last week. On Saturday the Minister for Health resigned from Parliament. On Monday the three counsel assisting the inquiry delivered their conclusions based on the evidence, which were pretty damning. You can read more about it in the article Devastation and despair: Hotel quarantine failures blamed for 768 deaths.
