Covid 19 coronavirus: Dictator Dan - Anger in Victoria over third lockdown
12 Feb, 2021 06:30 AM
6 minutes to read
#DictatorDan quickly began trending on Twitter in Australia. Screenshot / Twitter
news.com.au
By: Natalie Brown
The announcement of a snap five-day coronavirus lockdown in the Australian state of Victoria has been met with outrage by some business owners and residents.
Victoria will enter a circuit breaker lockdown from 11.59pm tonight (local time), Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters this afternoon, in response to a 13-case Covid cluster linked to the Melbourne Airport Holiday Inn MIQ facility.
Andrews said a lockdown was necessary because this [the UK strain of Covid-19 that the new cases are infected with] is so infectious and is moving so fast .
Deficiencies in Victoria’s previous hotel quarantine system triggered the state’s deadly second wave of coronavirus last year, which took the state’s coronavirus death toll past 800 and prompted a lockdown that cost thousands of jobs.
Premier Daniel Andrews has praised the state’s overhauled hotel quarantine system in recent weeks, describing it as the “most risk averse” in the country and saying it was being replicated by other states.
But a number of unions say they have been unable to get clear information about what if any assessments of ventilation were conducted at the airport Holiday Inn prior to the outbreak.
Victorian health officials have privately conceded to other states that contact tracers took too long to get in touch with people exposed in Melbourne’s new coronavirus outbreak.
After Victoria successfully snuffed out the second wave last year, the state is now headed back into a familiar lockdown in a bid to provide a "circuit breaker" on transmission of the UK strain of coronavirus.