CANBERRA, Oct 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, paid tribute to Melburnians for enduring over 260 days of COVID-19 lockdown.
In an opinion piece, released by the PM’s press office today, Morrison declared that, “victory is in sight” in the “battle of our generation.”
Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, is set to exit lockdown tomorrow, after reaching a full vaccination rate of 70 percent.
It will mark an end to 262 days in lockdown, since the start of the pandemic, for the city of five million, and the first time since June, that no Australian city will be under lockdown.
“With the state reaching the 70 percent double dose vaccination milestone, victory is in sight,” Morrison wrote.
“I want to thank each and every Victorian for the incredible job you’ve done.”
The end of lockdown comes, as Australia reported more than 2,600 new locally-acquired COVID-19 cases today.
In the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), 28 new cases were reported today. ACT Health Minister, Rachel Stephen-Smith, ruled out a vaccine mandate for staff and detainees at Canberra’s prison, despite it being considered a high-risk setting.
Yesterday, the ACT government announced a vaccine mandate for disability support workers and in-home aged care workers, but Stephen-Smith said, the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC) was a “very different” case.
“Correctional services officers are not providing close personal care to detainees,” she said.
“And what we have seen in the AMC is a number of detainees being positive, a staff member who was positive at work, and those things were managed very closely and we haven’t seen the spread of COVID-19 in prison.”– NNN-AGENCIES
