The state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, reported 2,189 new local COVID-19 cases and 16 deaths on Friday, making it the centre of the Delta outbreak in Australia.ĭaily cases in New South Wales, home to Sydney where the Delta variant was first detected in June, dropped slightly to 345. A LONG LOCKDOWNĮven with Delta outbreaks across Australia's southeast from late June, coronavirus numbers are still far lower than those of many comparable nations, with some 152,000 cases and 1,590 deaths. "This is a wonderful day - Australia is ready for take-off," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said shortly after the Qantas announcement.Ī quarantine-free travel bubble between Australia and Singapore could operate from next month, Morrison said, if an agreement is reached as expected. Qantas said it would launch a new route from Sydney to Delhi in early December and bring forward plans for flights to Singapore, Fiji, Johannesburg, Bangkok and Phuket. Qantas Airways Ltd (QAN.AX) said on Friday that it would speed up plans to restart flights to many destinations and upsize some planes amid "massive demand". 1, fully vaccinated international travellers arriving in Sydney and Melbourne will no longer need to quarantine. Just over 70% of adults in Australia are now fully vaccinated and many residents are planning to fly overseas again as international border restrictions start to ease from November. Similar jubilant scenes were seen in the country's largest city, Sydney, almost two weeks ago, when authorities started easing restrictions as COVID-19 vaccination rates rose. "I have urged our customer base, make sure you have booked in your Christmas cut." "We all love cutting hair and being on the floor is such a lovely feeling, being around people," he said. Josh Mihan, owner of The Bearded Man barber shop in Melbourne, told Reuters he is nearly booked out for the next month and he is encouraging customers to make appointments for Christmas. Many venues, including food outlets and even haircutters, opened at the unusual hour for the occasion. on Thursday when lockdown restrictions in place since early August ended.
In Melbourne, people were seen cheering and clapping from their balconies, while cars honked horns continuously at 11:59 p.m. MELBOURNE, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Melbourne residents flocked to the city's pubs, restaurants and hair salons in the early hours of Friday after the world's most locked-down city emerged from its latest spate of restrictions designed to combat the spread of COVID-19.Īustralia's second-largest city has so far endured 262 days, or nearly nine months, of restrictions during six separate lockdowns since March 2020, representing the longest cumulative lockdown for any city in the world.Īrgentina's capital, Buenos Aires, last year went through 234 straight days of lockdown. Qantas to speed up plans to restart flights amid strong demand.Melbourne has endured six separate lockdowns during pandemic.Victorians are less interested in finding restaurants or cafes to enjoy than they are in finding a rapid antigen test (RAT), for example. There are other signs, too, that highlight a shift in focus from enjoying the freedoms of a reopened economy to navigating the pressure caused by the rapid rise in Omicron cases. "We really are all in this together and the data proves it." There are fewer CBD trips for shopping and dining "And that really untangles that narrative that we had, you know, all the way through 20, where there was this fear, there was the suspicion, that there were other people somewhere else that weren't doing the right thing," he said. While he said part of it would be due to Omicron hitting essential workers and those on lower incomes harder, it also spoke to that community's hard-learnt appreciation of the "perils of this virus".Ĭatch up on the latest COVID-19 news here Mr Byrne said that trend extended to Melbourne's outer suburbs, where lower socio-economic communities had been among the first to go into lockdown this time around. "And that trend is something that we're seeing all across the city." "But generally, for that ordinary day-to-day travel, be that to a workplace or to a friend's house or family, that travel is no longer happening.
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