Melbourne: Officials in Melbourne, which has spent more time under COVID-19 lockdowns than any other city in the world, stated on Sunday that the stay-at-home restrictions will be lifted this week. Since March 2020, the Australian city of 5 million people has been under six lockdowns totaling 262 days, or nearly nine months, when some limitations will be eased on Friday. According to media reports, this is the world’s longest lockdown, surpassing Buenos Aires’ 234-day siege.
While coronavirus infections continue to rise in Victoria, the state’s capital, the state’s double-vaccination rate is expected to exceed 70% this week, allowing for the relaxation of restrictions. Around 80% of the population of the state has received all of their vaccines. As the Delta version has proven too transmissible to suppress, Australia, which was previously an advocate of a COVID-zero policy for pandemic management, has been moving toward living with the virus through massive vaccines. Once 80% of the population has been fully vaccinated, the new technique eliminates the need for lockdowns. Around 68 % of Australians who are eligible have been fully immunized as of the weekend.
Despite a recent increase in instances, Australia’s coronavirus counts are low in comparison to many other industrialized countries, with a little over 143,000 cases and 1,530 deaths in the last year.
New Zealand, which is also learning to deal with Covid-19 by speeding up vaccinations, reported 51 new cases on Sunday, 47 of them in Auckland, the country’s largest metropolis, which has been under lockdown since mid-August. New Zealand vaccinated more than 2.5 percent of its population on Saturday as part of a government-led mass vaccination campaign.
